


Neck Flicks and Chill

by Collective_Challenge



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Japril - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Crime, Drama, F/M, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Supernatural - Freeform, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-10 20:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12307596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Collective_Challenge/pseuds/Collective_Challenge
Summary: Bringing Japril to the Silver Screen!A collection of Japril-heavy fics, centering the couple amidst the storylines of some of our favorite movies.So kickback, relax...Fanfic and Chill





	1. The Challenge

**The Challenge**

THIS SUMMER...

FROM THE CREATORS OF THOSE FANFICTIONS THEY NEVER UPDATE, COMES THE MUCH ANTICIPATED COLLECTION OF MOVIES THAT LITERALLY NO ONE ANTICIPATED - BECAUSE NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT! REGARDLESS...IRREGARDLESS?...WHATEVER, MAN ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯...JAPRIL THE MOVIES

Jackson and April, Everyone's favorite couple...well, unless you're Krista I-don't-remember-her-last-name or Shonda Trying-to-get-away-with-murder C-rimes.

Taken to the Big Screen, via the little screen (or is it Vice Versa? or Freaky Friday?), adapted by Fanfics, written by people who definitely had better things to do. Watch as they wander tirelessly through scripts that were already written, making it 10 Times easier to write the fic than it usually was...which was the only reason some of them agreed to do this.

Enjoy the blissful moments that you are denied, by those who shall not be named...err, claimed - acting like damn dementors. And Marvel that some of them aren't even from real movies. A challenge that was too long in the making...

Starring (or staring too ;-) Jesse "How is this man even real" Williams and Sarah "You deserve better than this" Drew.

Japril...The Movies you wish Sarah and Jesse actually were in so you didn't have to read fanfiction instead...

\- Mel "Just a teeny bit salty" D

* * *

We've all wondered how amazing it would be if Sasse were in a movie together! BUT since that is beyond our reach, we decided to see how awesome it would be if Japril were in the settings of different movies!

The we that we refer to are...drumroll please...WE are  **COLLECTIVE CHALLENGE**

We are South African, Sri Lankan, Brazilian, English, Greek, Canadian, Filipino, German, American and more.

We are Farzana, Melusha, Veronica, Annick, Dimitra, Zanelle and Sam, Darlene, Maggie, Gwen and Heather and our wonderful newest addition (the thorn amongst the roses :-P or more accurately, as evidence dictates, the rose amongst all these thorns ;-) Jerry. We definitely do not subscribe to any gender bias, the analogy is simply a poetical one.

The participants to this challenge are: FaziO, MelMel1234, Japril12, Demitruli, Fuckwithdacey, AnotherMaggie, Imayhaveapoint and Jerry_L (aka Delicatenachocollector) .

Dear readers, you are an integral part of this challenge. For, once again, you get to blind judge each of the individual one-shots via the review mechanisms – and if you like, take a stab at guessing which story belongs to whom. Also, for this challenge, try and identify the movie too ;-)

Enjoy...Please do, oh delightful, review penning, kind-hearted readers ;-)

Also, hugs to everyone still sad about the premiere +4 :) Hope this helps!

As per challenge 1, this too shall work on the same principle. So a week of blind judging before the authors (and, if it's not obvious, the movies the stories are based on) will be revealed. If we could be a bit pedantic about the whole thing, please could you review the relevant story on  ** _that_**  story/chapter? Helps with an accurate accounting.

Thanking you, once again, for your participation. And to the lovely, talented writers (lol, self-praise...so gauche :-P) for all their time and effort and for gracing us with these masterpieces.

Onward, my good people!

\- Mel & Faz – On behalf of The Collective.

 **Disclaimer:**  Grey's Anatomy characters belong to Shonda Rhimes, Shondaland, GA and...ABC? Netflix?

 **Addendum Disclaimer:**  The movies belong to...Hollywood?...whoever made them?...whoever bought them legally, did not borrow IT from their cousin without returning IT, did not buy the pirated DVD and did not download it. Yep, that last one. Why is your eye twitching?

 


	2. Doc Trauma: The Time Traveler's Wife by FaziO

**Doc Trauma: The Time Traveler's Wife**

Dear Future Self...don't do it, man. Don't be the ass who let's her get away...

Love, Death, Time.

Einstein called time a stubborn illusion.

He was hungry and he needed to score some food. Jackson Avery was master of the quick hustle and crashing was a con he'd perfected. Not to mention that food and him were a symbiotic relationship. A woman could desert you, or call you a dessert, but a burrito never left you unsatiated.

Okay, yeah he was spinning it, but c'mon man without his appetite so much food would never reach the zenith of its existence – that of sustaining his human form with joy and life. Shakespeare had nothing on him…He was a poet and he didn't know it.

The hardest part of travelling was the hunger. And the nudity, of course. Also the disorientation. He couldn't satisfy any of these needs without partaking in some form of petty theft. From a young age, he learned how to pick locks and to steal clothing to ensure his travels. It was rare that he was able to count on the kindness of strangers. Not that any of them were privy to his exact circumstances. Just that he was homeless, foodless and clothes-less. It rarely, if ever, got to the stage where he would need to explain the conditions leading up to that state of affairs.

His disorder took a toll on the one person who knew, so in essence the relationship with his father suffered because of it. It didn't help that he had no control over when and where he traveled. And the ultimate betrayal, to his dad, that the condition manifested on the night he lost his mom. Which meant that even after her death, he'd sometimes travel to her past and meet her as a young woman or new mother. As far as he knew, his remaining parent was the only person in the know.

* * *

"….Avery here will assist you."

She watched as his ears perked at the sound of his name. A Pavlovean response? Or considering the venue, perhaps Schrodinger's Cat would qualify as a suitable analogy. Dependent, she supposed, on where you landed on the scale between dog or cat person. His aura screamed hound. So Pavlov's dog it was. Which meant that he was predisposed to respond to the arrival of food. This also lent itself to the very interesting and anticipatory probability of slobbering saliva. Which, she supposed, could wait for their second date.

Of course it could just be his supervisor with a task, but the man was facing away from him and clearly addressing…well her. He was simply the conduit. Spoken about but not to.

"Jackson…Jackson Avery?" The question emerged from her larynx as a breathless expulsion of air and she watched, excitedly, as that oh so youthful countenance turned to face her.

As he'd told her eons ago, their initial meeting would come about unexpectedly – to them both. A second chance to make a first impression, he'd joked.

Would he recognize her now? He'd said to her once – after some acquaintanceship and when she was no longer jailbait – that he loved the way his name rolled between her succulent lips and off her delectable tongue, automatically acquiring the special lilt and cadence of stormy emotion. Would it be familiar to him? Would he love it still? Or would he love it before?

Crazy ass and mindboggling. Should she give him a heads up…?

"Ye..eah. That's what she said," he unknowingly Michael Scotted her with his quizzical response.

"Well at least you have on all your clothes this time. Even though I didn't mind the other…"

"Wait…what? Do I know you? Have we met before? I would certainly remember seeing you naked…"

"I didn't say  _I_  was the one naked. And you did say,  _'I'll be back'_ , she Schwarzeneggered. That Governor of California had to be a Terminator…and a Kindergarten Cop. Old but not obsolete. "I didn't know you meant that last view would  _be_  of your back. Your bare back…back-side. Your ass, your bum, your crack, your-"

"Okay stop. C'mon lady. Who are you?"

"Sarah Connor. Terminator infiltration unit. See these guns," she flexed impressive looking biceps, "part woman, part machine. Fully armored hyper-alloy combat chassis, micro-processor controlled. Covered by human living tissue. Flesh, skin, hair, blood…all grown for the cyborgs," she recited as if reading from an invisible teleprompter.

"…sounds fake Sarah. Hella interesting, tho," he in turn flexed his own muscles – Thinker's pose. "ABC should make a movie of your life," he continued with a sarcastic ponderation. "However since there appears to be a hint of ass-cracking nudity, move over network. Here comes Netflix. So…How about we get a cup of coffee and you tell me all about your time travel mores. And also how you got here clothed."

"Come with me if you want to live…"

"Arguing with you puts me at a strategic disadvantage. Also makes my brain hurt."

"Bite me."

"That is a very immature response."

"Hasta La Vista…Baby."

They were killing it with this Terminator flirting.

"I can see you're interested in time travel? Meet here last Thursday 7PM."

"I am dead inside."

"I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."

"You are not good at this. At all."

"Blame the algorithm."

The other references though…they were meh. But super entertaining.

The puns however, they called to her…Just call her Rapunzel…

"Astronomers got tired of watching the moon rotate around the earth for 24hrs, so they just called it a day."

"I, for one, like Roman numerals."

"People who get abducted by extra-terrestrials can't really tell anyone. They must feel so alienated."

"Why did Adele cross the road? To say hello from the other side."

Working in a library allowed him to bone up on everything, so he was extremely pun-worthy and a formidable pun-foe. Neither one of them let up on the other.

So there he was. Unexpected and out of the blue. She'd known and loved him practically her whole life and yet here he stood before her. Whole and hearty and with not a smidge of recognition evident anywhere on that cool as a cucumber visage. You'd think a time traveler would know when his future came a knocking.

Not so with Jackson Avery. Admittedly he needed more than a few good back to the head whacks at times. Light love taps, of course.

All's fair in Love and War. Love means never having to say you're sorry. And her personal favorite, Love is Pain. Each an apropos cliché. Each fundamentally true. Each simply requiring a recipient to pick their poison. This was a sentiment she would surely revisit during the recounting of her life and loving this man who'd barged naked into it. Quite literally as it were.

"Chipotle?"

"Say it don't spray it."

"It's your favorite. How 'bout we meet there instead? Tonight, eight o'clock? Chipotle, down-town…"

"Yeah, it is. Burritos, Tacos and Nachos…how can you ever go wrong? Not to mention Guac goes with everything. So, okay, we'll meet there at eight."

"April Kepner."

"Huh, what kept you in April?"

"That's my name. You've known it for a long time J-Man."

"Sorry I'm late."

"It's fine. I don't mind waiting. We've been trying to meet for a long time. So I'll wait."

"I just met you, April. When you were a child, on your parents farm. You were hiding away from your bullying sisters – they were searching for 'Duckie' – and came across me. Or rather I stumbled upon you. 'A freaking Swan' you said to me. You gave me your blanket and I had to convince you that I'm a time traveler."

"I remember. It was our first meeting. You were older than you are now. But more mellow. And patient. And kind."

"And you were…incorrigible. And brainy. A tiny red-headed termagant. Such a little spit-fire. You wanted me to prove that I could really time travel. You were so hard to convince but conversely you were trusting all the same. Just knowing who you were and things about you didn't convince you."

"But seeing you disappear in front of my eyes sure did. I don't know if I should be telling you this…?"

"No, it's all right. I need to know."

"I've been waiting for you. For so long. You've been my best-friend since that first time, Jackson."

What she didn't say, but was the driving force behind her words, meaning inherent in everything she  _did_  say, was that she wanted to be with him. Him and her. He was not only her BFF, he was her soul mate. Her one.

"It's okay, we have time, April. We're gonna be best friends, again and for the first time. Me and You."

"Me and You."


	3. Focus, Avery! by FuckwithDacey

**Focus, Avery!**

From a young age my parents have always told me that after high school, college was the only way to go. I have always had a different vision for my future. I didn't want to go to college but I did anyway, for my parents. I graduated top of my class but I wasn't happy with the direction my life was going in. I wanted something rebellious and exciting. I have always been the good girl, always doing the right thing, being kind to people, respecting people, treating people the way I would want to be treated, my mom would say to me. But people never treated me the same. I decided to get into the business of pickpocketing. I was doing great, at least I thought I was doing great until I met an older gentleman called Jackson.

I met Jackson at a high end bar where I was trying to perfect my pickpocketing skills with rich guys who wanted to use me for my looks. A young guy was harassing me until Jackson came over and pretended to be my boyfriend. He was very tall, dark and handsome. I went along with it because I couldn't take this young man treating me like an object. Jackson invited me to his table to hang out with him for the rest of the night. I really enjoyed talking to him even though I knew I was going to try and bring him up to my room to try and rob him. Little did I know that he was on to me.

That night I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about how charming he was and how I could learn so much from Jackson. I remember during our conversation at the bar he had said he was going to be at big horse racing event. I need to learn as much as possible from this older and more experienced guy. The next morning I went to the horse racing event. Jackson wasn't really surprised with me being there, which just confirmed to me that he was good at what he does and I knew I was right to want to work with him.

He invites me to one of the most busiest days in New Orleans so I can work with his team to see if I'm a good fit. Jackson doesn't actually do the pickpocketing, he's like the leader watching over everyone. Needless to say I impressed Jackson.

Later that night there was a big crew party where Jackson invites me and everyone is celebrating the success we had and this is where things get interesting. I've really come to like Jackson and I think he really likes me too. We spend the whole time at the party dancing together. Not just any kind of dancing but that close intimate dancing, if you didn't know us you would think we were already a couple.

"Do you want me to take you home," Jackson asks.

"No I think I'll just take a cab. I'm a big girl I can take care of myself," I tell him.

"That's probably a good idea," he agrees.

In my room just thinking about how I wanted Jackson to come home with me and I hear a knock at the door. I already know it's him.

"I couldn't stay away," he says.

"I'm glad you are here," I reply.

Without warning he just leans into this passionate kiss and he lifts me up to my bed. I can't believe this is me now. In bed with an older gentleman who I just met. But there is something about this guy Jackson that just makes me want to be with him.

I hope I don't regret my decision of being with him and working with him.


	4. Greyless by Another-Maggie

**Greyless**

So OK, you're probably thinking "A blog? Why on earth would April – of all people – start a blog? That's so 90s." It's actually April Kepner (yeah like the month), but that's so passé. Mononymous is the new chic. Just ask Beyoncé, Madonna, Adele or Cher or better yet the artist formally known as Prince.

But seriously, it wasn't my idea. The blog I mean. I know vlogs are the latest thing, but my psychiatrist said I should try to put my thoughts into words, not images. I know following the steps of "Eat, Pray, Love" would probably have, like, the same results, but I'm pretty sure she didn't even watch the copy I gave her last week. And since my trauma originated in the 90s we agreed doing a blog is the most authentic.

Where to begin? Huh, I know. Me. I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl. I get up, I brush my teeth, and I pick out my school clothes. Then I go down for breakfast. Usually we get Starbucks, though, but I make sure my daddy has some vitamin C before he goes to work. Coz, you know, vitamins are vital.

Daddy's a litigator. Those are the scariest kinds of lawyers. Even Lucy, our maid, is terrified of him. He's so good he gets paid five hundred dollars an hour just to fight with people, but he fights with me for free 'cause I'm his daughter. And he likes to fight over the juice, but, like nine out of ten times, I win anyway.

So, today, I lost the juice fight, but that's like – the exception. In my defense I was totally distracted, because – to use lawyer lingo – exhibit A: Daddy totally refused to go visit grandma and granpa in Malibu and it's been, like, months. And exhibit B: Jackson is coming to dinner.

If you're wondering who Jackson is, and  _why_  he's coming to dinner…? we're on the same page.

After my mom died during a failed liposuction (total standard operation, daddy sued their fine asses, obvi) my dad was all sad, so he married again. After the mourning period, for sure. But then after a year or so he divorced her and that was five years ago, so like: get over it. But, anyway, Jackson is the son of my ex-stepmom and so he's coming over to dinner tonight, which I don't appreciate, but it's not like I wanna fight this fight over Jackson, even if I don't have to pay for it.

But I'm sure you don't wanna hear about Jackson. Let's talk about Arizona instead.

Arizona is my best friend. That's because we both know what it's like to have people constantly being jealous of us. I also have to give her snaps for her courageous fashion efforts. Absolutely 90s for sure.

Arizona and her girlfriend Callie are in this dramatic relationship. They fight, they make up. One time, Callie got a concussion after being in a car accident with Arizona. Then Arizona went on a plane and it crashed and now she's got that nasty scar on her leg. She was in the hospital for like, a month. I think they've seen that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort movie too many times.

Anyway, whenever they're, like, fighting, which is basically always, I have to say: "Zona, why do you put up with that? You could do so much better."

And then she'll say: "You're right." but stay with Callie anyway, and I don't know, I guess she likes to hear it or something.

But Arizona, in case you're reading this, I think you guys are the cutest and I never get tired of saying this. Love you so much.

Moving on to... school. Well. Can't say I like that a lot. I mean, I'm good, obviously, because I'm smart. But it's not like it's my favorite place to be, you know? And I don't think you can blame me. It's the teachers that make it bad.

Like, for example, today I had debate class with Mr. Hall. And when I do a talk in debate, everybody knows it's not going to end up like Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries (whom I liked OK…when I was eight…but then she started that whole head shaved Les Mis thing and we all know how that stuff goes down from Britney Spears). My speeches are on point.

But even after solving the whole "who's going to pay for the Mexican wall?" issue by simplifying the whole thing so that  _anybody_  (even the Mexicans) would understand, Mr. Hall gave me a C. A  _C_. In debate. I've never gotten a C. Quite frankly, until this day I knew I would  _never_  get a  _C_. This must be the beginning of the end. Not even the Nucleanado's got anything on this. This is a disaster!

So, after a talk with Arizona I went home, had a talk with Lucy…the housekeeper remember…(even though I don't speak Mexican), changed my clothes from school to after school, and already felt way better about everything. I was just putting another coat of lipgloss (can't go wrong with that) when I heard Twenty One Pilots, band of the guys sans fashion sense but with self-pitying lyrics, blasting downstairs.

This could only mean one thing after the conversation I had with daddy in the morning: Jackson.

Of course I found him in his natural habitat: roaming the fridge.

Now you know I'm very charitable. I, like, tell Lucy to give the change to the Ronald MacDonald house when I'm craving a slushie. Or take my clothes from last season to the H&M conscious thing. Stuff like that. So, obviously, I would have to comment on Jackson's flannel shirt (ugh!) and choice of university (who's he kidding trying to hang around here? We all know the girls on the East Coast aren't at all particular).

But did he listen? No.

Instead he went into the living room and changes the channel from TLC to BBC or whatever. Some kind of news channel. Like, you've been here for two seconds and now you're already playing couch commando? He really has no manners.

But the worst part about when Jackson's coming over is when daddy starts comparing us.

Because he thinks Jackson's got "direction" and "knows what he wants to do". But I know what I want to do, too. I mean. I would, if I was 19 and in college, but I'm not.

So who's to blame? Not me, that's for sure.

And besides, Jackson of course managed to put me on the spot at dinner making daddy ask about my report card. Because of how smart I am I got out of it. But Jackson really should have known better.

After I've got Mr. Hall in the palm of my hand, getting Jackson out of the house will be my next project. That's for sure.


	5. Guardians of Grey's Anatomy by Jerry_L

**Guardians of Grey's Anatomy**

"So, its up to us to get the Harper Avery Award Orb safety to New York in time for the ceremony tomorrow. I promised my mom we'd do it and I'm not a man who makes promises I don't keep," Jackson Avery told the motley crew assembled before him.

April rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, anyway," she muttered.

"What was that?" asked Jackson.

"No problemo, Skin Lord," answered Alex Karev, the 'muscle' in the group.

"That's Sky Lord," responded Jackson irritably. Plastic surgeons never get any respect, he lamented.

"Whatever." Alex, while good with kids, didn't relate particularly well to other adults.

"Jackson, what kind of trouble are we expecting?" asked April Kepner. Her cheeks were still a little flushed thinking of what Alex had called her ex husband. She thought she was the only one that called him Skin Lord.

"According to my mother, the Foundation has evidence that our old friend Cristina Yang has gone rogue and begun printing up an army of soldiers using the large numbers of 3D printers at her she'll stop at nothing to get a hold of a Harper Avery so we'll need to be especially vigilant. April, why do you look so green?"

"Must have been something I ate," April answered, unwilling to admit to the disastrous attempt to give herself a spray on tan.

"Well, you should know that your sisters have joined forces with Yang because they are apparently really jealous that you get much better looking guys than they do," Jackson smiled.

"Really? I heard they were angry I replaced them as bridesmaids at my wedding."

"Same thing, really. OK, are we ready? Uh, Jo, why are you wearing that raccoon costume?"

"It's my disguise in case we run into my abusive secret husband that only Alex and Deluca know about. Aw, dang it."

"It's okay, Wilson, your secret is safe with Jackson and I," April assured her.

"How do I know you won't tell?" asked Jo.

April thought for a moment. "How about I tell you one of our secrets and then we'll be even? Jackson and I slept together in Montana but now he wants to bang that slut Maggie Pierce."

"That sort of sounds like two of your secrets," answered Jo.

"Yeah, well..."

"Okay, people, that's enough. We need to get moving. We have a long drive ahead of us to get to New York by Saturday night," Jackson called out, shooting April an angry look. Let's see if she can decipher that look too, he thought.

"Aren't we missing something?" asked Jo.

"What?"

"The tree character who just says one thing all through the adventure but somehow manages to steal every scene."

"Oh, I took care of that," announced Alex proudly. "Hey, c'mere," he called to a large figure lurking by the ER entrance.

"Hodor," said the man.

Jackson groaned. "Wrong show, dumbass. We can't take him. Gonna have to do without that character."

"Hodor?" said the man tearfully.

"Now, now, it's okay. The mean Sky Lord didn't mean to hurt your feelings," April consoled him.

"Alright, lets go. I'll drive," he said as he hit the unlock button the same time as April did, effectively unlocking and re locking the car doors.

"You didn't have to be so mean to the Hodor guy," she said to him over the hood of the car.

"I wasn't mean," he answered irritably. They repeated the unlock/lock cycle.

"Because telling someone they aren't wanted isn't mean," April retorted. Unlock/Lock.

"Sometimes it's necessary to break things off before someone leaves you in the lurch," he answered her.

Unlock/Lock

"You could have said Sorry."

"Oh, you're a fine one to tell me I should say I'm sorry."

Unlock/Lock

Jackson was angry and exasperated. "Just STOP, will you?"

He unlocked the doors. April mouthed sorry but as he went to open is door she clicked the locks shut again. He looked at her.

"So NOT sorry," she smirked evilly.

They were finally on the road, making their way from Seattle to New York, rotating driving duties and never questioning why they didn't just take a plane, or a spaceship, for that matter.

The first sign of trouble came in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Hey, did you guys see that sign?" asked Jo.

"Huh, what sign?" asked April.

"The one we just passed. It said TROUBLE in big capital letters."

"Why do you think it has anything to do with us?" asked Jackson.

"Because Cristina Yang was holding it," Wilson answered.

"Well, jokes on her. We're doing 80 miles per hour and leaving her far behind." Jackson smiled grimly.

"Uh, Jackson," said Alex nervously.

Jackson looked in the rearview mirror at the Peds surgeon. "No! Absolutely not. You just went twenty minutes ago. How can you possibly need to go again?"

"It's Yang! Whenever she's nearby I get a nervous bladder. She's always had that effect on me."

"Oh for crying out loud! Anybody got a bottle, or a cup, or something?"

"Eeewwww! No way, Jackson. Alex is NOT peeing in the car. There's a truck stop coming up. Let's make a quick stop for hummingbird bladder back there and then we'll be right back on the road," said April.

Jackson reluctantly agreed.

Once Alex had relieved himself they jumped back into the car and got back on the Interstate.

"See, you big sissy, no harm done," said Alex.

"Not so sure about that," answered April.

"Why do you say that?" asked Jackson warily.

"I think we're being followed."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, for one thing, there's a big black SUV with dark tinted windows that's been right behind us since we left the gas station."

"Yeah but how do you know they're following us?"

"Jackson, do you ever even go to the movies? Black SUVs with tinted windows are the ultimate following car cliché."

"So, that's pretty circumstantial..."

"And it has a bumper sticker that says "I CUT OUT PEOPLE'S HEARTS FOR A LIVING."

"That's Yang alright," Jackson admitted. "But why isn't she attacking?"

"She's biding her time," answered April.

"Toying with us, like a surgical board exam." Jackson and April looked at each other. That brought back memories for both of them. Great memories. She is so damn hot, he thought, how did I forget that?

He was so gentle and caring and considerate and amazing, she remembered.

Hours later they were barreling through Ohio, the black SUV staying just a few car lengths behind them.

Suddenly April sat up with a little gasp. "Holy crap! We're going right by Moline in ten minutes."

"Yeah," Jackson said, "so what?" They were sitting in the back seat now as Alex drove and Jo slept in the passenger seat.

"If my sisters have really joined with Cristina, then it's likely that they'll try something here on our home turf."

Jackson tapped Alex's shoulder. "Alex, did you hear that? Get ready. We may be driving into a trap."

"I was born ready. Uh, what sort of trap are we talking about? A big trap? Little trap? Will it have snakes? I hate snakes," Alex answered nervously.

"Steady, Alex, steady," April told him.

A few minutes later, Alex stomped on the brakes and the car screeched to a stop. There in the headlights in front of them stood three redheaded Kepner sisters, all heavily armed and out for blood.

"Well, girls, it looks like its Duckie hunting season," called Libby.

"Yeah, time to hunt some Duckie," agreed Kimmie.

"I thought she didn't want us to call her that anymore," said Alice. Her sisters looked at her contemptuously, shaking their heads.

"What will we do? They have guns," Jo asked in panic.

"You don't see any snakes, do you? I hate snakes," Alex added.

"Okay, people. Let's stay calm while Sky Lord comes up with a plan," April counseled her companions.

They all looked to Jackson.

"Alright, heavily armed Kepners in front, Yang cutting off our escape to the rear... Yeah, I got nothing," Jackson admitted.

"Whaaattt?" reacted April. "You're an Avery! Your grandfather invented the Harper Avery Award Orb! You must have some special Avery powers."

"I do make a mean cup of coffee. Chicory," he winked.

"We're doomed, aren't we?" asked Alex.

"Not me," said Jo. "They're hunting ducks, not raccoons. I think I'm good."

"They'll kill all of us and take the HAAO," answered Jackson.

"Wait? Is it the Harper Avery Award Orb or the Harper Avery Orb Award?" asked Jo with a confused expression on her face.

"It's the former, not the latter," answered Jackson.

"That's even more confusing. Does the former mean the first thing or the second thing?" asked Alex.

"Latter means the second of two things," April explained.

"So its the Harper Avery Orb Award," said Jo.

"No, its definitely the former," said Jackson.

"But she just said it was the latter," cried Alex, now thoroughly perplexed.

"It's the Harper Avery Award Orb and Yang and her friends are about to kill us to get it," Jackson stated emphatically.

"Wait, I just thought of a plan," said April, getting out her cellphone.

"I hope its a quick one because they are raising their guns to fire," said Alex, pulling Jo in front of him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be shielding me protectively?" she asked.

"Maybe they won't shoot a cute little raccoon," he answered.

"Hi, Mom. Listen I... No, I'm fine. Yes, Harriet is good too. No, Jackson isn't burning in hell quite yet but that's sort of why I'm calling..."

Moments later a powder blue minivan screeched to a halt behind the Kepner sisters. Karen Kepner emerged and began dragging her daughters back to the van by their earlobes. There was a chorus of Ows and Ouches as Karen promised them groundings and other punishments. In less than a minute the roadway was clear again and Alex brought the car back up to speed.

"So what did you tell your mother to make her come and get them like that?" Jackson asked.

"Oh, I just happened to open my Find My iPhone app last Sunday night and noticed that all three of them were at the Church."

"So, why would your mother be upset that they went to church Sunday?" he asked.

"Because they weren't at church, they were at THE Church. The Church of Sin is the most popular strip club in Toledo and Sunday happens to be Ladies Night, or so I'm told," April trailed off.

Jackson smiled. April's quick thinking had saved the day. Sexy and smart too. What the hell was he thinking with that Maggie Pierce thing?

As they neared New York they began to think they might make it to safety yet. Had Yang been discouraged when her accomplices had been dragged off by their mother? Was she giving up? Jackson didn't think so.

"I don't think so," he said. He again was driving with April riding shotgun beside him.

"That was random," she said. "What is it you don't think so?"

"I don't think Yang has given up. I think she still has some move planned. I just wish I knew what she was thinking."

"But we're so close. Do you think she would try something this close to New York?"

"It would make sense. It was the site of her greatest defeat. It would be just like her to avenge herself in the same place."

"That makes sense. But let her try. We've come this far, we're not going down without a fight."

Jackson looked at his still pale green ex-wife. He'd always admired her bravery and fighting spirit, even when it was opposed to his. He found himself oddly enjoying being on this adventure with April at his side. Whatever Yang had planned for them, he knew they'd face it together.

The miles to the hotel hosting the awards ceremony ticked down. Fifty. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Still Cristina made no move. Ten. Five.

Finally, something happened. Suddenly the big black SUV sped up and came alongside their car. The tinted window on the passenger side came down. They found themselves face to face with Cristina Yang.

Her dark hair blowing wildly in the wind, she let out a maniacal laugh, and sped forward, as the window rolled back up. But instead of cutting them off or trying to crash them, the SUV continued to speed forward and was soon lost in the New York City traffic ahead.

The car was rife with tension now. Yang was ahead of them now, no doubt waiting to spring some new trap on them, probably within sight of their destination.

In the back seat, Alex and Jo were speaking to each other in low voices, saying the sort of things that people say when they are unsure of another chance to say them.

Jackson looked to April and found her biting her lower lip in her nervousness. It was something that never failed to elicit a reaction from him. He reached over and took her hand in his. Yang would have to go through him to get to her.

Now they were mere blocks from the hotel. They had one more turn to make and then they would be there. Jackson turned the wheel and brought the car to a stop, a full city block from the entrance to the hotel. Between them and their destination stood an army of animated 3D printed fighters. And standing atop a black SUV, their dark queen, Cristina Yang.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the wet-dream team from Grey Sloan. Or perhaps you'd prefer to be called the Suicide Squad?" Yang called.

"Yang, give it up. Come back to the good guys and earn this thing on your own," yelled Alex, hoping their long history together would help convince her to give up this mad plan.

"Karev, you're the spokesman? Things are more desperate in Seattle than I thought. Listen, Alex, because we were friends once I'm going to give you a gift. You get to live. Just walk away. Its a limited time offer."

Alex looked at Jo. "How about my little raccoon friend here? Would you let her go?"

Yang laughed. "Sure. I'm feeling generous toward little creatures. I'll let your little furry friend go."

"You heard her," Alex said to Jo. "Get outta here."

Jo shook her head. "Not without you."

"Look, just go. I've gotta stay but I'll do better without worrying about you."

"Forget it. I'm staying with you." From somewhere within her costume Jo produced a tire iron. "Don't worry about me."

Alex smiled. From his pants he produced a baseball bat.

"Is that a bat in your pants or are you just happy to see me?" Jo asked him, smiling through the tears that tracked down her cheeks.

"Tsk tsk, I guess you're still too stupid to do the smart thing, Karev," Cristina told him, shaking her head.

Then she turned her attention to Jackson and April.

"And there we have Flopsy and Mopsy, the oddest couple ever. I thought you two had called it quits? No matter. I'm afraid I have no deals to offer you, mediocre grandspawn of Harper Fucking Avery. You must pay for the sins of your ancestors. But at least you'll die knowing that the orb will have a treasured home in my trophy case."

She turned to April. "And I'd offer you an out except that I know that no matter what he's said and done to you, you'd never leave him, not really. So I suppose I'll have to end your pathetic little life too."

April moved closer to Jackson's side. "Touch him and I'll carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey."

"Ooh, a surgical challenge? That could be fun. Do you think you could hang with me out here? You never could in an OR."

"Bring it, bitch!" answered April. Jackson looked at her in wonder.

Yang laughed. "Well, at least I tried. Losers, let me call your attention to my minions. It took me and my science team years to figure out how to print and electronically animate them. Millions of dollars too. But we'll soon recoup that. Seems there are a number of world leaders willing to pony up big bucks for completely loyal, bulletproof, metal polymer soldiers, that I can print out by the thousands. Seems only fitting that they'll be getting me my permanent Harper Avery Orb Award today."

"Harper Avery Award Orb," Jackson automatically corrected.

"That's what I said," answered Yang, unhappy to be corrected.

"No, you said Harper Avery Orb Award," confirmed Alex.

"No, I didn't. I said ... Screw it. Prepare to die."

April was going over what Yang had said in her head. Metal polymer, electronically animated. She had an idea.

It surprised Jackson when April suddenly left his side. But he didn't have much time to think about it.

Yangs minions surged forward. Alex and Jo leapt to meet them. Alex's bat crashed against the first minion's head, knocking it back but not obviously damaging it. Jo, ducked under a punch from the second and her tire iron crashed heavily in between it's legs. Sparks flew and down it went, writhing in artificial pain.

"Hit em in the crotch. That's where the electronics are," she yelled.

Alex laughed. "Typical Yang, making them think with their crotch." His next blow, to his enemies crotch, dropped another minion.

Yang cursed herself for her carelessness. But it had seemed so funny at the time.

Jackson, though was having a tougher time. Forgetting to arm himself all he could do was try to kick at the minions trying to engage him. It looked like he may be overwhelmed when he heard April yell "Charge" behind him.

"April, I can't charge right now," he answered, dodging backwards.

There was a redheaded blur as April jumped in front of him and applied the portable defib paddles to his attacker. The shock instantly short circuited not only that minion's electronics but also the two nearby who happened to making contact with it. The metal polymers used in their construction happened to be wonderful conductors of electricity.

Cristina cursed again. Hearing April call Charge brought back memories of her time at Grey Sloan. She hated when that happened. It made her feel bad, and not in the good way. She remembered making fun of April for Teddies sake, to avoid having to tell her that her husband had just died on the table in the adjoining OR. April, observing from the gallery above, had just sat and taken it, understanding why she was doing it. You had to be strong to do that. She had admired that about April Kepner.

What she didn't admire, though, was the way the little trauma surgeon was scurrying around shorting out her minions in bunches. Jackson had somehow acquired a club of some sort and now he, Alex, and that silly raccoon girl were herding her minions together so Kepner could short whole groups of them out with one charge.

Soon, her minions were scattered about the pavement and the little rat pack was high fiving each other, thinking they'd won the day. Well, Yang thought, if you want something done right, blah blah blah.

Yang jumped down off the SUV. "Did you knock down all my little friends?" she taunted them. "Well you should certainly be proud of yourselves. I guess all you have to do now is get by me."

"Cristina, come on now, give it up. Its four against one. We don't want to have to hurt you," Alex told her.

"Four against one? Hurt me? Oh, please, Karev. Have you forgotten my superpowers?"

"Superpowers?" asked Jo.

"This little group is made for my particular talents. Take you for instance, my furry friend."

"Me? Alex what is she talking about?"

"You, the girl that lived in her car. What did you call her, Alex, Hobo Jo?"

Wilson stood quietly now, her eyes downcast.

"Knock it off, Yang," Alex said angrily.

"Really, Alex, you want to defend her? After what she was doing with Deluca?"

Now Alex, too, fell silent, looking at Jo.

"Guys, don't listen to her," Jackson cried.

"Jackson, I think I hear your daddy calling. No, wait, that wouldn't be you would it? Come to think of it, this group is the trifecta of daddy issues isn't it? Alex, weren't you pleased when your bushy tailed girlfriend connected you with your dear daddy so you could watch him suffer and die unpickling himself."

The bat dropped from Alex's hands and clattered to the ground.

"So Jo, why didn't your daddy rescue you from your oh-so-kind husband? Is it because they were cut from the same cloth? Did you marry your daddy, little Josephine, so desperate for a man to love you?" Jo's tire iron slipped from her fingers as she brought her hands to her face.

A great fear rose up in April. Cristina's words had cut into Alex and Jo and left them helpless. Now she was turning her attention to Jackson and herself.

"And you, Jackie boy, I believe you recently met your father. Was it an emotional reunion? Filled with regret and remorse for missing your life? No? Didn't he tell you his life was empty without you in it?"

April could see it was now Jackson that was frozen. She had to do something.

"Jackson," April said, "don't fall for her tricks. She doesn't know you. You're stronger than this."

He looked at her doubtfully but seemed to draw some strength from her. Cristina couldn't have that.

"Oh, April, always there for him, aren't you? Except of course after Samuel died and he needed you most. That's when you ran off to Jordan for a year, isn't it? But of course you learned your lesson and came back to stick by him after that, right? Oh, wait, no you didn't. You went back. You went back even though he told you it would end your marriage. But, I'm proud of you, girlfriend, you went anyway. Priorities, right?"

April found herself paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to breath, as Cristina's scorn washed over her. She had failed him. She had failed them all. Her life was in ruins. Then an amazing thing happened.

"Leave her be," April heard Jackson say thickly. Her heart leapt. He was still in the fight.

So close to victory, Yang reacted quickly to quell this unexpected uprising.

"That's what you did, isn't it Plastics boy? Leave her? When she wanted to fight for your marriage you preferred to fight for your divorce. How'd that work out for you two?"

Lashed back into submission by Cristina's viscousness, Jackson again fell silent.

"I still love you, Jackson. I always will. And we have Harriet." April would not let Jackson fall. Not alone at least.

Jackson looked at April, and a small smile replaced the tortured expression of a moment earlier.

Yang was beside herself. It was like whack-a-mole with these two. She decided to quit toying with them and move in for the kill.

"You love him? Oh, that's so sweet. Except for one little problem. He doesn't love you, does he? He's chosen someone else."

But April barely heard the words meant to break her heart once and for all. Her attention was focused on Jackson, who had begun to move toward her. Cristina couldn't believe her eyes. WTF was going on here?

Jackson reached April and stood before her, looking down at her with a smile. She looked up at him questioningly. "I have something I want you to remember," he told her.

"I want you to remember our secret marriage bubble. Do you remember? Just after we married and no one knew but us. Do you remember how happy we were? Do you remember how much I loved you?" he asked her.

"Yes, I remember," she breathed in reply.

"Good. I want you to keep us there, in love, just for a few minutes. Can you do that?"

"I think so," she answered.

"Maybe this will help." He leaned down to kiss her and when they finally broke the kiss, she looked around in wonder. She and Jackson were encased in a bubble of light. She could see through it. She could see Alex and Jo, staring open-mouthed at them. She could see Cristina, who looked like she might have a coronary at any moment with the way she was screaming and yelling. But oddly enough, she couldn't hear anything Yang was saying. The only sounds she heard were the beating of their two hearts.

"How?" she asked..

Jackson looked at her, still smiling. "I don't know. Maybe its my Avery superpower. But I think it's probably a simpler kind of magic."

"You mean..?"

"I love you, too, April. I always will."

"That's pretty magical," she giggled.

"Yeah, it is," he agreed. He gave her another kiss. "You'll be safe in here. When the time is right, take the orb to Meredith."

"Wait, where are you going?" she asked, though she feared she knew the answer.

"I've got to deal with her. We haven't won yet."

"Jackson, I won't leave you," April insisted.

"April, this is the way it has to be. I made a promise. And I'm a man who is tired of not keeping his promises."

"Why don't we both take the orb to Meredith?"

"April, you of all people know that bubbles don't travel."

Jackson stepped outside the bubble and faced a very angry Cristina Yang.

"I don't know what kind of circus trick you might be pulling there, Avery, but it won't protect her for long."

"Long enough, I believe," he answered.

"Don't bet on it." Cristina reached into her coat and drew out a razor sharp ten blade. It glittered in the dying light. "Since my words don't seem to have had the desired effect, it's back to basics. It's a shame to disfigure that pretty face and body but you've left me no choice. And I'm betting killing you puts a pretty quick pop to the bubble that's protecting your little virgin conquest there."

Aw crap, thought Jackson, and once again I'm weaponless.

Suddenly a shadow passed overhead and a sorting hat fell at his feet.

"Right genre, wrong movie, but thanks," Jackson yelled to the departing Phoenix. Stooping he reached into the hat, hoping to find the sword of Gryffindor. Instead he withdrew a different instrument of great importance; the Scalpel of Grey. "Hmm, a little rusty," he muttered, looking at it in wonder.

"Prepare to meet your doom," cried Cristina.

"Takes one to know one," retorted Jackson, who struggled a bit with comebacks in these sort of circumstances.

As April looked on in horror, Jackson and Cristina circled each other. Then, with lightning quickness

Yang lunged, her scalpel flashed, and first blood was drawn. A crimson streak appeared across the front of Jackson's shirt.

"Liking your thoracotomy so far, plastic boy?"

"Oh, did we start? I hadn't noticed."

"Not surprising. You never were much of a surgeon."

"Good enough to help you save Shepard," he answered.

Yang reacted as though she were the one cut. "Don't talk about that."

Again she struck. Jackson couldn't match her speed and another streak appeared across his shirt.

"Maybe instead we should talk about you and that kid. The girl whose mother we lost. The one you played cards with while we tried to save her."

Snarling, Cristina darted in and cut him deeply before he could dodge. Jackson was now bleeding profusely. But it was Yang whose breathing was labored and ragged.

In spite of the blood pouring from his wounds, Jackson's voice remained calm. "She asked you. She asked you what would happen if her mother died. She knew, didn't she? I'll never forget how you answered her."

With a primal scream, Cristina leapt forward and slashed again. Jackson was driven to his knees. He fought to stay conscious.

"You told her she would feel like she could have done more to help her but it.. but it wasn't true. You did everything you could, you said."

"Shut up!" Yang screamed. She was the one who appeared to be in agony.

"You said she'd feel pain every time she thought of her mother. But that over time it would hurt less and less."

"I'm going to slice your fucking lips off if that what it takes to shut you up!" Cristina yelled.

"And eventually, you told her, she'd remember her and it would only hurt a little bit."

"Now you die!" Yang screamed, raising her bloody scalpel again.

"Think again, PsychoBitch!" said a voice behind her.

April hit her with the defib paddles and Cristina crumpled to the ground.

"Oops, forgot to call Clear," April said to the unconscious Yang. Throwing the paddles to the ground she went to kneel beside Jackson, who had now slumped to the ground himself.

"Jackson! Stay with me. I'll get the medkit and get control of the bleeding."

Jackson's eyes fluttered. "April. You were supposed to take the orb already. Quick, before she comes around. Get the orb to Mer or it will all be for nothing. You have to get to safety or it will all be for nothing."

"No, Jackson, I'll never leave you. I don't care about the Harper Avery Orb Award, whatever. I care about you. As long as we're together we can handle anything life throws at us."

"Me and you," he whispered.

"Me and you," she confirmed. But it was too late. He was gone.

"Jackson!" she wailed. "Nooo! Nooo!" her cries echoed a night long ago.

She woke herself up with her cry. Wow, what a dream she'd had. It had seemed so real. That's what she got for letting Jackson choose Guardians of the Galaxy for their last movie night before she moved out of his place. The pepperoni and jalapeno pizza at eleven o'clock probably contributed too.

Even though she knew it had merely been a dream, she still had to get up and make sure Jackson was okay, irrational as it was. So she got out of bed, pulled her robe over her pajama top, and tiptoed into the hallway to try and peek into his room.

His door was slightly ajar, making it easier for her to push it quietly open a little farther. She looked in and was surprised to find his bed empty. She was about to call his name when her own was called behind her.

"April?"

Startled, she jumped a little and turned around to find Jackson, breathing and without apparent bleeding wounds, standing behind her, holding a glass of water.

"Oh, you scared me," she told him.

"Yeah, you kind of scared me too. I heard you having a nightmare and went to get some water for you. Are you okay?" He offered her the water.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," she answered, accepting the water from her ex.

"Pretty crazy dream, huh?" he smiled as she gulped the cool water.

"Yeah, last time you choose the movie for movie night," she replied, before she realized there would be no more movie nights for them.

"Yeah, well...yeah," he stammered.

An uncomfortable silence followed. Finally, April broke it saying, "Well, thanks for the water. Guess I'll try to go back to sleep now. Big day tomorrow. Moving day and all."

"Yes, big day," Jackson answered, looking at her carefully.

April brushed past him and was just about to enter her room when she heard him ask, "Did you mean it?"

She turned. "What do you mean?"

"When I looked in on you I heard you saying something about never leaving me, about caring for me, about how we can handle anything life throws at us as long as we're together. Did you mean it?" he asked earnestly.

"It was a dream, Jackson."

Jackson nodded sadly. "Just a dream."

April nodded once and turned to go again.

"Except you said Me and you. We weren't dreaming when we first said that to each other."

April turned to look at him again, trying to read his expression in the darkened hallway.

"No, that wasn't a dream."

There was silence for a moment again.

This time it was Jackson that broke it. "How do you suppose your dream would have ended, if you hadn't woken up, I mean?"

What is he doing, thought April? Should she take a chance? Or was it too late?

"I don't know, Jackson, you were pretty much gone," she ventured.

"But not all the way gone yet? I hadn't had the big day yet?" he asked and his meaning was clear now.

"No, not all the way. I think with a lot of work on my part.." she answered hopefully.

"And a lot of effort on mine..."

April nodded. "We could be saved."

Jackson smiled at her choice of pronouns.

"So that's a good dream, then," he said.

"A very good dream," she replied, now smiling herself.

He reached for her hand and she gave it to him, following as he led her toward their bedroom.

"So, I guess this means I will get to pick the next movie for movie night," he said.

"As long as it has Chris Pratt in it. He's a hunk," she answered.


	6. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Guess Who's Getting Greyed Out? by FaziO

**Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Guess Who's Getting Greyed Out?**

_Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I'm feelin'?_

Her heart did that flutter thing and her brain responded, "You stop that right now." It was not her time yet.

She'd felt this overwhelming type of love only once before and then it had taken all of twenty minutes for her to fall under his spell. This time it simply took one gaze through the wall of glass and she was hooked. She knew that, until her last breath, her heart would beat solely for him.

This was flowery metaphorical speak, obviously. No need for  _anyone_  to get his panties in a twist...

That hollow muscular blood pumping organ was something she too was an expert in. And she made this claim with no false modesty. She was the woman behind the man. Well two men if you were being technical – one of whom was relegated to the past. Gone but never forgotten.

As it were, contestant number two was that scion of a medical dynasty, pioneered by his scientific breakthroughs in everything heart. Except, as she'd learnt to her detriment, feeling and emotion. Although, if you were to objectively analyse it – like on the rare occasion when he took the time to expound on the subject, his this, one true passion – he'd loquaciously elaborate on the intricate functioning of all things cardiovascular. The gist of his sermon, the nucleus of his talk, or if one were being idiomatically ironic, the  _heart_  of his message, would be that the aforementioned body part was simply a physical organ; a biological blood pump. Everything else was intellect.

Fear, Love, Hate, Angst, Joy, Sorrow, Anger – none of these emanated from what was simply a functioning cog in a larger machine. So while someone might describe the expressing of emotion, as if to say leading with their heart, this wasn't literal. It was figurative. Bordering on poetical, even.

Consequently, with that basic precept of thought, the critical thinker, unhindered by preconceptions, would dispassionately conclude that the commonly run-of-the-mill fist-sized binary chamber (sans pre-existing medical condition) definitely does not control a person's behavior.  _That_  transpires in the cerebral cortex. The limbic brain, to be more precise. Heart Transplants are thus merely a change in the physiological body, with no mean feat of psychological transfer.

He would know this. Expert in corporeal anatomy but total failure in anything resembling sentiment.

He hadn't always been this way.

Perhaps the "heartless" automaton he'd become was a repercussion of loving her. The fitting similitude of the towering mental pericardium that he'd built to protect his non-physical heart – that building of it – was all her doing. She'd caused it. This unbreachable wall.

He was the eminently endowed Dr. Harper Avery: Cardiothoracic Surgeon Extraordinaire.

No. Oh no. No no. Obvious no.

Very clearly  _not_  the appropriate adjective. Or accurately detail orientated.

...Not to say that he fell short.  _Slightly_  deficient possibly. Maybe even...average?

That was an Affirmative. Average it was. It seemed to meet the criteria of suitable defining word. Less emasculating and yet a more viable descriptor, right?

Ooh, now that would surely get his goat. If he were to ever find out that he was considered inferior, or perhaps even (shudder and softly whimper)  _mediocre_ , in anything, by her. That he did not measure up. Although, she presumed, on some level he already knew this.

Clearly she had  _had_  endowed. Enough for her to make the comparison.

The word to use here was renowned, she supposed. Possibly also, on an academic level – mind over matter, as it were – endowed with accolades?

Mind on his money and money on his mind. Fame, fortune and awards. They were all interlinked.

So, Yes. In those contexts, the word association was apt.

He was beautiful, this love of her life. Baby-soft copper skin, curly black hair and the one feature that she would swear was her legacy; the inquisitive greyish-blue eyes that mirrored her own. Obvious heir to the family business...Heartbreaker. Unorthodox association, but true nevertheless. He was not her baby…and yet…he  _was._

She was Joanna Eleanor Avery. Mrs Eleanor Avery.

Her husband's PR had seen fit to revamp her title, removing in its entirety the fun and flighty first part. Frivolous, was Public Relations definition.

The matriarch of  _this_  dynasty they imperiously instructed, had to reflect a demureness, a stoicism, a no-nonsense approach, stemming from her name down. Their demand of contradictory traits of shyness coupled with stony-faced confidence gave them no pause, caused not even a moment of hesitation. No realization existed as to their unreasonableness in this, the heedless pursuit of perfection that their tiny minds considered exemplified First Lady of  _The_  Surgical Empire.

Her inner strength though hidden from prying public scrutiny, they claimed,  _screamed_  'Eleanor'. Evidently, in the manner of wealthy elite, so more of an  _understated whisper_. No serenaded Streetcar Stella-type similarities seeking strife, they supplicated. Needless to say, any whiff of intrigue regarding her mysterious past was to be avoided at all costs.

Her supposition though, was that it was their way of controlling the narrative of what had been. It was ridiculous. It's not like she – or her family, or her ancestors – contributed in any way towards furthering either despicable system; that of human chattel enslavement or even indentured servile drudgery.

Either...both...were abhorrent. Repugnant. Plantations built and ran on the backs of slaves. Oppression and bondage being their lot. She considered the practice of slavery contemptible and for the descendants of slaveholders, this was the absolute worst skeleton they could ever have in their closets.

Those granite depictions of America's slave owner forefathers – 60-foot-high representations of narcissism; their faces sculpted for eternity into the sides of Mount Rushmore – should have, in her opinion, been rendered ass-face backwards, loudly proclaiming America's shame.

Lording it over the masses they were, the portrayal itself offensive to the thinking man.

They deserved to be reduced to rubble.

For their crimes against humanity. For stealing, owning and abusing human beings, individually and collectively, against their wills. For the genocide, occupation and exploitation of melinated people. For the blood and sweat they spilled and reveled in and for the free menial labor they profited therefrom.

Hate and its ensuing actions, based solely on skin pigmentation.

Black People they'd kidnapped from their homelands and sold into servitude and original inhabitant Red Indian People they'd evicted from their native country, land stolen out from under them. Some, the remaining, they'd rounded up and corralled into reservations like animals and yes, millions they'd simply slaughtered.

The unmitigated gall of unashamed, self-titled supremacy of white Amerikkka astounded her.

Unfortunately, for the "Land of the free and home of the brave" it – the good ol US of A – would never  _be_  those accolades. A quote by some Comedian she didn't know but which had summed up the situation, came to mind. Frankie Boyle had said, "The reason America is such a horror story is that the entire thing is built on an Old Indian Graveyard."

How apropos was the old chap's words? Entirely appropriate, was the correct response. Even though it simply was a rhetorical question.

Everything white America had accomplished had been the result of appropriation and via genocidal occupation. Language, mathematics, science, music, dance and even comedy. All stemmed from the roots of People of Color.

And then to top it all off, the non-accountability. Bathing in their entitlement and heritage of stolen riches with a screeching "Look what you made me do." Squawking, like fowl headed to slaughter, they preyed on the sympathies of the soft-hearted and the ignorant, crying copious tears of white victimhood.

Ascending from middle class morality into hubris, they turned the other cheek, excluding their white asses from a narrative they created. Marinating in the juices of imagined slights, they cashed in the coin. Immoral, disrespectful, privileged, caught red-handed...yet they antagonized. How 'bout that 180 degree burn…an identical value turnaround on  _that_  blame game?

White people, or rather racists, were and are the antithesis of superior. Inflating their egos and very existence with the superlative adjective of 'Supreme'. It disgusted her. White mediocrity claiming supremacy; equating their brand of lacklustre, transparent blandness to that royal word.

White Supremacy. It was Oxymoronic.

The  _only_  Supreme she acknowledged was Diana Ross. Supreme Diva of  _The_  Supremes.

Upside down, inside out and round and round…DR (quite the appropriate acronym for someone she admired, true? Turns out it was possible to be both an intellectual, snobby artist as well as a doctor groupie) twisted it all about. Twistin' time was here…wait a sec…wrong Black artist. Twistin' and limboin' was Chubby Checker swag. Notwithstanding CC or DR, the point was proven. Supreme was Black. Black was Original.

 _Was_  it considered offensive and/or insensitive to refer to a People by their skin color, she wondered. Figuring that as long as NO analogous correlation was made to food – thus endowing the observed person with characteristics that were a mere satisfaction of vain glorious superficiality of the beholder's vision – then she was good to go. Political correctness, then and now, was still a learning curve.

So she deferred to Avery PR and their ploys. Not out of a sense of shame, but because of the everlasting pain. Why allow strangers to dredge up and speculate on her former life when the memories were so bittersweet?

Of her own volition and in her own mind-space, she fondly recalled the time when she was simply Joey Drayton. And on the rare occasion, with a pang of nostalgia and the ever-present wrenching ache of grief, when she'd joyfully been Joanna Prentice…Mrs Dr. John Wayde Prentice.

The sixties, for her, had been an era of conciliation and reform with many older retired career couples having brought up their children to value substance and character. To eschew blind racist practices and to inculcate honorable work ethics derived with effort and a well-substantiated, preferably Ivy League, education. At least, that was her family. But hindsight was twenty-twenty and her experiences altered her perceptions. So the after, she viewed through a different lens.

She was the much loved only child of affluent, but down to earth, parents. They were quietly, understated elegance. A sophisticated refinement; a tasteful palette. They were the classy-without-shoving-it-down-your-throat types. Think a Hepburn-Tracy kind collaboration. Style, wealth and a knack for cutting, satirical verbosity.

Did she mention that her father had been a much-lauded critical journalist? He had detested prejudice, racism and oppression in all its many-faceted colors and had made no bones about fighting the scourge. His scathing editorials had been rife with his liberal viewpoints. Specifically anti-apartheid sentiment and applause for the civil rights movement, of which he was a huge proponent.

The great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his "I have a dream" speech, had in later years made quite an impact on her parent, but the former, as a whole, had initially not impressed him. For he had no time for religious pontificators. For the most part their "Turn the other cheek" mentality had grated. Matt Drayton was an action man, a revolutionary, a Malcolm X, young Fred Hampton or Mohammed Ali type – except for the Black Power, no whites (and definitely no white sheets) allowed part. However, Dr. King's future letter, that the exceptional civil rights leader penned while in prison, had quite an impact on her dad's latter and later mindset. An eye opener really to what white American alleyship lacked and what needed to change.

Rev. Dr. King, a doctor by virtue of his doctorate in systematic theology had written about his disappointment with white moderates.

_"...the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…"_

This excerpt of Dr. King's letter, would have a surprising resonance to the lessons of his life – a rejection of the  _negative peace_  versus an acceptance of justice, the _positive peace_ , and hence to John himself. This was achieved after, obviously, and only once the distance of impartiality and retrospection allowed.

Her mother, though not as famous, had been successful in her own right too. An art gallery owner, she'd revamped multiple industries. That of the poor artist, the classless one-dimensional hotel room scenery works and of course conventional beliefs in what constituted art. She had single-handedly and successfully turned all those concerns on their heads.

So it came as no surprise that the educated daughter of Matt and Christina Drayton judged not on the basis of color when she interacted with people. A part of it was the eternal joy and optimism that she as a person epitomized, but yes her upbringing played a major role too. And perhaps it was a testament to her faith in them and how they'd brought her up that lead to her introducing her parents to her proudly African American fiancé. He who was as dark as night.

Oh, did she forget to mention that she was white? Pure as the driven snow.

Shade only, of course. She was no newly hatched ingénue.

Though not intentioned as such, what it had ended up being was a test of their belief system. Not a religious ideology per se and not any of the big three Abrahamic emanations of Monotheism – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – or even off-shoot denominations of them.

Neither did they follow the tenets of any of the lesser hyped Sanskrit philosophies such as the origins of Hindu, Tamil or Telugu, with their Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita scriptures. Nor the practitioners of peacefulness that Buddha represented. Also not, embarrassingly – if you considered the myths of it and that it was her  _parents_   _and_   _kinky_   _sex_  that were under scrutiny here – following the non-religious Kamasutra. That which Western orientalists had converted to represent as religious text to follow the British Colonial Masters subversion; the English-man's mantra being "Divide and Conquer."

Nor too any of the other mystical Eastern cultures such as the ones observed by The Chinese and Japanese. Mayan, Aztec, Greek, Roman and Norse Mythology; none of those either. And of course, the Hollywood creations like Scientology were not yet a blip on the world's radar.

They were practicing Atheists. Which was an oxymoron if she ever heard one. So their beliefs basically banked on the moral and ethical imperative of doing good, without any incentive and with no reliance on a future reward. Which to her mind and later point of view of lived and learned experience, was contradictory. What was the inducement otherwise? And the classification of good versus evil…who defined either and what was the distinction?

She was exactly as her parents had brought her up to be. They answered her questions and she listened to their answers. They told her it was wrong to believe that White People were somehow essentially superior to Black People…or Brown, Red or Yellow People, for that matter. People who thought that way were wrong to think that way. Sometimes hateful, usually stupid, but always wrong. That's what they'd said. And when they said it, they did not add, "But don't ever fall in love with a Colored Man."

So here her parents, and her father in particular, had to ante up. The tolerance they preached had become an in-your-face example. Although she'd learnt to hide the experience in subsequent years – mainly out of sorrow; she'd  _never_  been ashamed or embarrassed – she  _had_  shared it with her one special guy...

* * *

_Ebony, Ivory, living in perfect harmony…_

They'd ignored the white cabbie's gawking. They were in love. So, on the way from the airport, the much more pleasurable pastime was kissing and canoodling in the taxi backseat instead of paying mind to a stranger's furtive glances at them.

While interracial marriage was taboo in many states of the US, and still illegal in some too, this was San Francisco in the sixties and anti-miscegenation laws had been repealed as late as 1948. So here interracial love was no longer a crime. Even if it was stare-worthy.

It was enlightening, all the different perspectives that people had on her love. Their opinions on who and what he should be, and mildly rage inducing infuriating to them, what he should look like. Conforming to their shopping list of physical qualities. Specifically the pigment of his skin and how much melanin absorbable receptacles that largest body organ possessed.

And conversely, including from her own backyard too, the expectations on the reverse side of the spectrum. Her ghostly appearance and what that paleness represented. The consensus largely being that she'd been taken advantage of. It was untenable to some that her knight in shining armor would be the guy in the black hat. Not the Hollywood Western Movie version of villains wearing black hats, but simply the color black. Or, more accurately, the absence of color, black. And definitely no anti-hero comparison.

He was her choice. Her chosen one.

Think a larger than life, Sidney Poitier type.

Tall, Dark and In Charge. And if one was being sappy, Handsome too.

Well, okay. She had a type. Tall, Dark and Handsome had become a cliché for a reason.

Not that she fetishized Black Men...or he, White Women.

This one simply attracted her on multiple levels; appealing on all fronts. Conforming to perfection in physique as well as intellectual acuity.

She was privately grateful for his brain and for her education. For without either, there would be no reciprocity. Her white skin alone would be no deal breaker for a man of his superior intellect. And neither would a simply physical interest be sustainable.

From Frank the taxi driver to her mother's assistant, pompous Hillary St. George, to their gruff exterior housekeeper Mrs Mathilda Binks (loved by all and affectionately called Tillie) and to Dorothy, the stunning young Negro woman who sometimes helped Tillie out; none were exempt. Even the young white delivery guy from Larry's Fine Foods wasn't immune to the societal pressures and pervasiveness of thought regarding inter-racial relationships. Although, to Dorothy and him and yes, to her twenty-three year old self too, they were considered the new generation; protesting anti-mixing (grammatical double negative, so in this case two wrongs  _do_  make a right) by being the living embodiment of pro racial-equality.

The older generation though...they all seemed to think that their individual prejudices should hold sway in  _her_ life decisions. Unsurprisingly, close family friend and her father's golfing buddy Monsignor Ryan, was the only non-judgement they experienced. Some would say that it came with the job description but she knew that was just who he was. And who she thought her parents were. Commandeering respect by the example of their non organised-religion morality. Convictions devoid of cumbersome religious dogma.

"You should have told them we were coming...you may be in for the biggest shock of your young life," was John's opening salvo on a topic that they'd taken great pains to avoid. For the simple reason that color wasn't an issue to either of them, so acknowledging it as a contentious point for their loved ones, they felt, would be to give the idea credibility or an importance that it didn't merit having. But out of their love bubble, was the big bad real world. And so they had a litany of views – from family, friends, acquaintances and yes, strangers too – hurled at them.

Cab driver Frank, had made no outright moves of aggression. They'd simply felt, but ignored, the surreptitious glances coming their way. His covert gaze a silent onlooker via the review mirror.

"How much do I owe you?"

"That's ten-fifty, Mac."

"Here's twelve-dollars, Frank."

John's behavior was impeccable. Even to the extent of tipping the cabbie. And what had been the reward for his troubles? A disdainful sneer and not even the courtesy of common human decency.

Perhaps it was that John dared to call him by his given name, thus putting them on an equal footing? That was asinine though...John was an educated man, a doctor. But even with this disparity in stature, not of size but of mind, Dr. Prentice was the one belittled. For daring to succeed where white man, with all the advantages his privilege entailed, failed. I guess some would not call it failure if driving a cab was the pinnacle of the driver's ambition. She had no problem with that point of view. If his career brought him happiness, then that was his success. Nevertheless, begrudging another his own victories because of falling short in your own endeavors, simply smacked of sour grapes.

These were the type of white people they'd been dealing with. Subtle racists. And scarily, just one spark, ignited by a hate fueled slick orator, could turn them into lynch mobs or, equally horrendous, Ku Klux Klanners.

"Dr. Prentice, so pleased to meet you," was how Hillary had greeted John while simultaneously looking down her nose at him. Hypocritical false half-smile accompanied. She probably would have had him removed from the gallery for daring to admire her beloved kinetic sculpture, while being Black. If Joanna hadn't been his obvious plus one, of course. The icing on the cake was her fake commiseration to Joey's own mother for having to endure a Black son-in-law.

"Oh my dear, how awful for you," her lips had bespoke while unsubtly gleefully gloating at what she hoped was going to be Drayton family social ostracism.

Her mother had fired Hillary's ass. Inherited ruthless streak be dammed, she couldn't have been prouder of her parent. A model of graciousness she'd basically guided the bigot to "hit the road, Jack – and don't you come back no more."

Regardless of the expression, or the Ray Charles ditty, she'd developed a fondness for the name Jack. Good. Solid. Strong. Stood for something. Even if all it represented was a good, solid, strong whiskey. She would remember the name.

Aah now, and what about Tillie? Her brusque, grumpy with a hidden soft center, housekeeper. She'd surprised her most of all. How could she love Tillie and not John, she'd asked her, if she used Tillie's basis of skin color as a measure? Both of them were darkest ebony and both of them she loved. Not despite their hue and also not because of it. In the equation of love, color factored zero to the power infinity. Which any mathematician worth her salt – sending Astronauts to space – knew equaled…one! In a poetical context however, Tillie-dramatizing if you will, the solution would be Nil. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

To Joey herself Tillie'd said, "I don't like seeing a member of my own race getting above hisself."

To her father Matt, as he'd entered the house, Tillie had over-dramatically complained, "All hell done broke loose now."

Her mother Christina was audience to a huffily indignant, "the way you talking Miss Christina, I don' understand nothin' no more."

These were clearly  _her_  parents, not Tillie's. Tillie's parents were late and were not also a Matt and Christina. So obviously she would not be addressing her deceased 'not Matt and Christina named' parents.

To John himself she'd had a lot to say…

When he'd tried to win her over with nervous humor, joking about being a horse doctor, it had not gone over well. To put it mildly.

"Oh, you make with witticisms and all, huh?" she'd shot him down. "You're one of them smooth talking smart ass niggers, just out for all you can get with your black power, and all that other trouble making nonsense," she'd harshly judged. Then threatened, "Ain't nobody gonna harm that girl none. I brought her up from when she was a baby in her cradle and as long as you're anywhere near this house I'm right here watching! You read me boy? You bring any trouble in here and you just like to find out what Black Power really means!" Flouncing out the room, she'd finished him off with the cutting jibe, "And furthermore, you ain't even all that good looking!" followed by the resounding sharp crack of a gu- nah, it was a door-slam. All the same, from John's description, to him it had felt and sounded like a verbal gun-shot.

It saddened her to see that the Uncle Tom mentality still resided within Tillie, even after working for the fair-minded Draytons all these years. It dismayed her too that Tillie was the inflexible one, unwilling to embrace a change that bettered the situation of the collective Black population.

As Malcolm X had explained in a 1963 speech at Michigan State University, "So now you have a twentieth-century-type of house Negro. A twentieth-century Uncle Tom. He's just as much an Uncle Tom today as Uncle Tom was 100 and 200 years ago. Only he's a modern Uncle Tom."

She couldn't really blame her though. It was a form of self-preservation. Tillie identified herself as Mrs Mathilda Binks, housekeeper to The Draytons. And not as Mrs Mathilda Binks, Black Woman.

Back to her parents now though…and his too. Also how well they'd all received the surprise engagement, and very soon to be wedding, newsflash.

"I take it Joanna's already busted out with the big news?" John had delicately interrupted the mother-daughter catch up, making his presence known. He'd yet to meet her as he'd been in the study when she'd arrived home. "She's only known me for ten days and so she can't tell you when I'm blushing," he'd continued when  _she_  continued talking him up. After formally introducing him, naturally.

On noting her mother's shocked expression he'd said, "Mrs Drayton, I'm medically qualified so I hope you won't think it presumptuous if I say that you ought to sit down before you fall down."

Not one to tiptoe around the subject, she'd simply put her mother on the spot. "He thinks you're gonna faint because he's a Negro," she'd pointed out.

Her mother hadn't fainted, but she had sat. They'd all sat. Her mother had "My Goodness-ed" and that was that. She was off, finding out about the next parent.

"What did they say when you told them that I wasn't a Colored girl?" she'd asked John about the telephonic conversation he'd had with his parents.

"Err-ahh-it felt like too many shocks for the telephone. After all, an awful lot of people are gonna think we're a very shocking pair. Isn't that right Mrs Drayton?" he'd quickly included the parent now in the know.

She'd brought her mother up to speed on the situation. How John had been invited to lecture at Hawaii University and how they'd met at a big party at the Deans. How they'd been inseparable since. How John was supposed to fly back to Los Angeles that weekend to see his parents, but how he was now having to leave that night for New York to meet a friend of his at Columbia University and then the following day flying off to Geneva for three months work at the World Health Organisation. And the blockbuster bulletin, that she intended flying to Geneva the following week so that they could be married. The whole situation in a nutshell.

"Except that John thinks that the fact that he's a Negro and I'm not creates a serious problem. I've told him ninety-seven times that it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to you or to dad, but he just wouldn't believe me. So that's why we're here."

"She's absolutely right Mrs Drayton. I'm sorry. I told her not to spring all this on you so suddenly."

Before they could confer further, they'd heard the honking of a car horn. Her father was home. It was update time for this here parent.

Okay, so she'd put them  _both_  on the spot. Her parents, that is. She trusted them and while their acceptance was simply a courtesy, both she and John wanted to start off their married life on a good footing with all the families. Yes, the period of adjustment was short but her parents had never let her down before.

"What the hell is all the rush?" her father had asked.

"Well we know that we want to get married. Unless somebody does have any objections, why should we waste any time? John and I aren't gonna change our minds," she'd answered her dad.

"Are you saying…are you telling me that you want an answer...today...about how your mother and I feel?"

"Well, of course we do. We want you and Ma to state absolutely clearly that you have no objections whatsoever. And that when we do get married, we'll have your blessing."

Giving her parents time to ruminate, she'd confessed to John, "I've been nervous. Oh, not about what they'd ultimately feel, but just their first reaction. I thought it was just possible that for the first time in twenty-three years that they might let me down for the first half hour."

"You're a big phony!" John had teased her.

Her father, Matt Drayton, intrepid former reporter had conscripted an informant. Ferreting out information by way of his assistant Edie. Having her call up the library and if they didn't have anything then the Medical Association. To "get the dope on a John Wayde Prentice."

Edith was to her dad then what Google was to the world today. Being that a person, and not the faceless internet, was behind the evidence, he wasn't able to hide his mortification as the credentials panned out.

"Prentice...A doctor of medicine. Fellow 'bout thirty-five, thirty-six. He's a Colored fellow," were the search parameters he'd handed Edie. The unflattering basics, as it were.

E-Google did not disappoint.

"He's an important guy. Just the main facts…Born Los Angeles 1930, graduated Maxima Cum Laude Johns Hopkins '54; Assistant Professor Yale Medical School '55; Three years Professor London School of Tropical Medicine; Three years Assistant Director WHO; Two text books and a list of monographs and medical society honors as long as your arm."

And the important personal stats any shot-gun toting father would be interested in. One on the lookout for any philanthropists interested in his daughter. Philanthropist? Obviously she meant Philanderer. Which John was so not and which Edith confirmed.

"Married Elizabeth Bowers 1955; one son John Wayde. Both killed in 1959 in a train accident in Belgium."

Of course, she already knew all this. But, to her parents, if his respectful asking for her hand and refusal to go against their wishes – if they absolutely disapproved of the match and the lightning speed of the nuptials – failed to convince, then this further humanized him.

What  _did_  surprise her though, was the passing down of the baton of the family name. Almost like a genealogical bequest, this non-physical family crest. Would their son be a John Wayde Prentice too?

"Would you think it some kind of cowardice that no matter how confident you two are, I'm just a little bit scared?" her father had asked John, positing the future of their, as yet hypothetical, children. His grandchildren.

"No, it wouldn't. But you never know…things are changing."

"I have a feeling they're not changing anywhere else quite as fast as they are in my own backyard. Just tell me this," her dad had continued, "don't you think this quick decision about how we feel about this thing, is a little unfair?"

"In a way I do. But it wasn't my idea that everything be settled so quickly," John had responded, following up by referencing  _their_  past conversation on the subject. "Your daughter said 'There's no problem.' She said, 'My dad is a lifelong fighting liberal who loathes race prejudice and has spent his whole life fighting against discrimination.' Then she said, 'My parents…well they'll welcome you with open arms.' And I said, 'Oh I sure wanna meet them.' You made her Mr Drayton," John had paused, "I just met her in Hawaii."

"It's the damndest thing you ever heard of. They pick up the brightest native kids and they put them through courses. They are all specialists trained to do one special task, like sewing up a wound or delivering a baby, or what have you. For every thousand kids they train, they can save a million lives a year." Her father was impressed. Not only with John's credentials, which were remarkable. But with what he did with that knowledge. The upliftment of the underprivileged. Inculcating within them a sense of pride and of purpose.

"He got the best breaks because everybody he met didn't want him to think that they were prejudiced against him. I wouldn't know how to fault him," she'd overheard her father praising her John. And it made her proud that the shock seemed to be wearing off and he was coming around.

Until she heard his comment to her mother. "You're so wrapped up in Joey's excitement over the whole thing that you're not behaving in her best interest."

She was not a child. She knew what and who she wanted. The asking was simply a courtesy to her parents. A mere formality. Definite thumbs down for her father.

What her future mother-in-law had to say to her dad though, deserved her applause. She'd said, "You and my husband, you might as well be blind men. You forget what true passion is."

Yes, John's parents had been invited to the objection intervention – unaware, of course. They'd been surprised to say the least. The upshot of the pre-dinner conversation, was that John Wayde Prentice Sr. was unable to see past her lack of color too.

"It's very interesting indeed and rather amusing too, to see a broken down ol phony liberal come face to face with his principles," the good Monsignor had humorously taunted her father. "Of course I've always believed that in that fighting liberal façade there must be some sort of reactionary bigot trying to get out," he'd further laughingly mocked the seriously scowling Matt Drayton.

By the end of that single day, everything was topsy turvy. With John's father against the union, his mother (and hers) bent out of shape that their respective husbands were prepared to stand in the way of true love, thereby having forgotten the passionate love of their youthful days, and John…he being prepared to reject her in the face of her parent's objection. When their approval was entirely unnecessary.

Her father had ended up surprising her. By being exactly who she thought him to be.

He'd made a few personal statements. His observations, essentially. After introducing Tillie to the senior Prentices, he'd begun with her.

"Mrs Mathilda Binks, who's been with us for twenty-two years…and who today has been making a great deal of trouble. 'All hell done broke loose now' she'd said to me. After some preliminary guessing games, at which I was never very good, I found out what circumstances she referred to. And that drove the mind-set of the day."

Her mother was next in the firing line.

"My wife decided to ignore every practical aspect of the situation and was carried away in some kind of romantic haze…which made her inaccessible to anything in the way of reason," he'd smilingly mocked.

And onto Uncle Mike – Monsignor Ryan…

"I have not yet referred to His Reverence," he'd gotten his own back for the earlier digs, "who began by forcing his way into the situation and then insulting my intelligence by mouthing three hundred platitudes and ending by challenging me to a wrestling match."

It was then the turn of her would be in-laws, The Senior Prentices.

"Now Mr Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says he has no wish to offend me but wants to know if I'm some kind of a nut. And Mrs. Prentice says, that like her husband, I'm a burnt-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter." He'd smiled at the thought, which had given her hope. "Strange as it seems, that is the first statement made all day with which I am prepared to take issue. Coz I think you're wrong. You're as wrong as you can be." Gazing at her mother he'd whispered, "The memories are still there; clear, intact and indestructible." Looking towards John he directed the next statement solely to him. "In the final analysis, it doesn't matter a damn what we think. It is completely unimportant."

Then it came, the father she knew and the acceptance – and advice – she'd expected, perhaps hoped to impress the equally extraordinary man she'd fallen in love with. That she was admirable in her own right, by virtue of the example she'd had and that his own choice of picking her held substantial weight.

"When Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him, you'll have no problem with your father," he'd directed towards John, with the slightest hint of a self-deprecating grin at John Sr. Thus humorously mocking himself too.

"There'll be a hundred million people right here in this country who will be shocked, offended and appalled at the two of you." This time the address was aimed only to John and her. "And the two of you will have to ride that out. You'll just have to cling tight to each other, and say…screw all those people!"

He'd paused, seemingly emotional. She'd realized that this hurt him…that he was unable to protect her from the hate fueled barbs of strangers. But she was strong, because of who he'd brought her up to be.

He'd continued, "Anybody can make a case against your getting married. You two wonderful people, who happened to fall in love, and happen to have a pigmentation problem." And the kicker, "No matter what case some bastard can make against you getting married…there would only be one thing worse, and that's if you didn't get married."

* * *

_You've got to give a little, take a little, and let your poor heart break a little…  
_

Whiteness is to never lose your humanity despite your best efforts; Blackness is to never have it in the first place.

Blackness is such a physical perversity that no matter how many doctorates you have, no matter how long you've owned your house, no matter how long you've been a professor at Harvard or Yale University, you can't walk, and you can't fiddle with your own doorknob.

Mere Black presence is treated as an act of aggression.

A sitting Black person is seen as the ultimate warrior.

Prose from someone who fancied himself a Revolutionary Activist Warrior-Poet, going above and beyond the truth of history and nature, but who was really just a narcissistic, ego-maniacal actor with delusions of grandeur and self-entitlement. His public persona didn't alter the veracity of his words though, or cause them to be any less relatable or more unpalatable. As plain and unvarnished fact, they resonated. Particularly, when the after-effects changed the course of her life.

The inherent unfairness, injustice and racial disparity those words evoked, was the why of how she lost her John. The how of how she lost him was the violent culmination of mistaken identity. In Amerikkkan parlance, multiple fatal gunshot wounds sustained by an 'intruder' entering a white-suburban home while being Black. The who done it, was the constabulary…justifying and excusing their bigotry by trying to retain the illusion of "Protect and Serve."

She would never forgive this country of her birth. For John and her to have overcome the hardships of being 'allowed' to be together, only for her beloved husband to be gunned down in a violent confrontation with inept police.

If only Geneva could have panned out for longer than the already extended time - she'd loved it there. If only she hadn't felt homesick. If only he'd stopped her from going alone and for him to meet up with her later. If only they'd gone together, her presence would have surely stopped the shooting…she just knew it would. If only she'd been at her childhood home when he arrived, instead of out getting spruced up in anticipation of his arrival. If only  _anybody_  had been home. If only it hadn't been Tillie's day off. If only he hadn't struggled with the spare house-key her parents had hidden under a flowerpot. If only her parent's racist white neighbors weren't pretend "Good Samaritans" calling in a 911 'attempted robbery' simply because of a Black Man at the door. If only incompetent police procedure wasn't "shoot first, ask questions later." If only Harper had gone with him and not simply had the taxi drop John off first, without waiting to see him enter the house.

There were too many "if onlys." And yet each one was a link in that chain reaction of events that culminated in her widowhood. But for them, they would still be together, happily married with a brood of children and grandchildren. Multiple John Waydes and Joannas. After all it was family tradition, the passing down of the Prentice moniker.

It wasn't right for her to blame Harper. He had loved John too…his best friend since Medical School. He had been just as devastated as she was. It was their mutual grief that had them turning to each other for consolation.

Harper had been a good friend to both of them. In Geneva, they'd been inseparable. Like the three musketeers. However, he'd never been inappropriate and he'd never pined for her. He knew that John was the love of her life and he was happy for them, that they'd found each other.

She and Harper though…they began as a matter of comfort and convenience. He'd been her rock. Taking care of her, the funeral arrangements and even the legalese of suing the SFPD. Nothing could bring her John back, but those who snatched him from her had to be held accountable.

It was during this time of mourning, when they'd been packing up the house that it had happened. Grief, then reminiscing over the good times, laughter amidst the tears – aided by the copious amounts of Jack Daniels they'd drunk toasting John's life. And one thing had led to another.

Both of them ignored it the morning after. They were consumed by crippling guilt. It was like they'd been unfaithful to John, to his memory. And so soon after. But it became life affirming. She was pregnant. And although, in the deepest recesses of her heart she knew who the father was, the tinniest kernel of hope bloomed that perhaps it was John's. She and John had been hoping to conceive for so long and it was the universe's ultimate slap in the face that a year of trying yielded no results and yet one slip up did. But perhaps it didn't. Thus she held on to the miniscule chance of it being so.

Harper had been happy at the news and while it wasn't a shot-gun wedding and neither were they forced into it, it felt like the right thing to do. Both of them felt that John would approve.

She'd later come to find out that Harper had fallen for her and that he'd been giving her time and space to get over her heartbreak at losing John. What he'd learnt however, is that the time to grieve cannot be rushed to conform to anyone's schedule and that the hands of time moved differently for each individual. Ironic really, this play on time and frustrating to a meticulous mind. The bell tolled and the clock chimed out its ire for every unproductive moment. Time wasted. So worked the brain synapses of a scrupulous-minded Avery.

Over the years their marriage had become comfortable but due to what he'd found out when she'd been in the throes of labor with her son, he never brought up John again. In fact the memory of John's existence, he wiped from his mind. She suspected that this was his coping mechanism, his method of avoiding the pain of heartbreak. The agony of losing John and the raw ache of never measuring up to him, for her. He became mechanical, robotic, emotionally closed off. Arctic ice encasing his metaphorical heart. It was why she blamed herself for the hardened outer shell he'd developed. She was the cause of it.

What Harper had found out, during the time she was occupied with the pangs of birthing her son, was that she wanted and yearned for physical proof that the baby was John's. She'd never sought that information out for if she never did then a 50-50 probability still existed. She was good at compartmentalizing.

Robert Avery was born all pink and shriveled looking. He was Harper, but with her eyes. Nevertheless she still continued to have faith. A belief unextinguished, that maybe a tiny part of John resided in him.

When her Robert met and married the force that was the Strong Black Empowered Catherine Fox, the embers of hope were stirred enough to re-ignite.

As an aside, the pangram "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog" always made her think of her fierce and somewhat intimidating daughter-in-law. For one, her maiden name. For another, the parallel between house pets, of 'Cat' and dog. And lastly because that phrase, using all the letters of the alphabet, interjected a splash of humor, even if it was only in her mind, that made Kitty Cat seem more approachable, less daunting. She reminded her a lot of John too, with the thirst she had for knowledge and yet she had a Harper Avery type ambition tucked away in that labyrinth of her mind. Catherine was what a child of John and Harper would have looked like with maybe a smidge of Joanna class and sophistication. If it wasn't biologically impossible and if she didn't know better…

Genetics huh? A wild ride.

So with Catherine's contribution to the gene pool, when Jackson finally arrived, she saw her John in him, the stubborn Harper Avery chin and her eyes…

* * *

_What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me…no more_

He was so frustrated. Stymied, really.

His ex-wife was giving him the cold shoulder silent treatment. That coupled with the hurt he glimpsed in her eyes when he chanced a rare pass over, confounded him no end.

F****** Hell. Why the F*** was he being blackballed?! Obviously not a racial epithet, in the explosive manner of it being a pejorative slur, and neither was there any sexual connotation intended. Yeah, if that was the case then he'd actually have to go with blue-balled...a tiny discoloration between black and blue.

This was PG, right? Hence, the profanity filter?

No...? Not...? Okay then.

Fuck it. What the fuckity fucks sake was up with April not fucking talking to him?!

He was aware of the irony, coming as it was – again, no intended innuendo to intercourse – from the absolute  _worst_  communicator in his corner of his world. That would be him. J Avery. In actuality, JR Avery.

Oh please...the initials were contraindicative to "Junior". How much side-eye action did he have to employ as an acceptable eye-roll indicator?

Although…he could see why that was a possibility. He  _was_  a Junior Avery after all.

However. Plausible Deniability. He refused to acknowledge the "R".

Just as his father had expunged him from his life, so too was Robert abandoned from his name and legacy.

He was simply, Jackson Avery.

Double Board Certified Plastic Surgeon and ENT Specialist.

And blackballed ex to one unnaturally quiet, usually terrifyingly opinionated, Trauma Surgeon.

What the Fucking Hell, April?!

And to top it all off...his step-sister, he couldn't get to shut up. She'd give him these weird looks, start a conversation and then segue into the most obscure tangents. Like talking Game of Thrones. It defied comprehension how  _anyone_  could stan that pairing of incestuous Lannister twins?! Was she effing serious? Right in front of his salad?!

At that point he actually stopped listening to the droning monotony that was her voice. He didn't appreciate it at all.

In an about face, he took to revengeful snubbery. Was that in fact a word...a phrase...actionable intent...an emotion or possibly skirting the edges of moral ambiguity? All he knew was that he wanted her, April, to know that he knew that she was ignoring him and consequently he was counter ignoring her. Even though they were divorced, April  _was_  still his best friend. His favorite person. Although, with this silent passive aggressive bullshit she was pulling, BFF was stretching it.

Childish petulance. He knew that he was High School Musical-ling it – minus song and dance number, of course. Coz let's face it,  _any_  musical talent genes had totally bypassed him. Another Avery non-inheritance; close but no cigar.

Hence, with teenage-like angst, he relegated her to friendly enemy status. Frenemy.

Not that his silent pouting garnered him any attention. The opposite, in fact. Admittedly using the tactic of a girl argument wasn't the wisest course when you pitted it against any female; they ALL were all too familiar with  _that_  ploy. Not only was it common to them, but women  _invented_  emotional manipulation. It came naturally to them.

No. He was so not patronizing an entire segment of the population and neither was he being a misogynistic sexist...or a sexist misogynist. Also not gender stereotyping the entire feminine gender.

Okay, well maybe he was. A little. And yeah he knew that wasn't April's MO at all. She was honest to a fault. It was just that, since he'd divorced her, she'd become a vault regarding her emotions. Not that he could blame her. It was just frustrating in the extreme.

Ergo, business as usual. Regarding usual business, that is. What the heck...plastics consults required his undivided attention with the added advantage of ER (and one exasperating red-head) avoidance.

It wasn't an in-your-face riposte but as a silent retaliation she got the message. She knew that he knew that she was giving him the brush-off and now she would know that his response to knowing was a reciprocal disregard. So there.

* * *

_Yeah, my momma she told me don't worry about your size, she says, boys they like a little more booty to hold at night. You know I won't be no stick-figure, silicone Barbie doll…  
_

God Damn It! Looked like yet another Botox Barbie.

Well he could be grateful for small mercies he imagined, coz from what he could tell of her frame, at least it wasn't another Liposuction Kardashian. Or, considering the theft of Black culture and curves they employed, the pertinent comparison should be Implantation Jennerashians. These culture vultures weren't even trying anymore – not a single original bone in their plastic bodies.

Either way, suck out the tummy and inject into the double B's – Butts and Boobs. Oh the boring monotony.

He couldn't really be sure, of course, since she was Greta Garbo'in it. Her uniform bespoke "vant to be left alone" but you had to read between the lines to clue-in to the underlined intention.

I mean, who wore a Mink, huge darkened sunglasses and a head scarf during this rare beach weather if not to announce their presence? She definitely wasn't going incognito with  _that_  fashion statement.

It was a garish attempt at attention grabbing garb. Which paradoxically could garner the wrong type of attention – that of the fashion police and, more seriously, animal rights activists. She was lucky not to have grabbed the notice of PETA…her brown coat would otherwise have sported quite the dousing of fake red blood if they'd gotten wind of her.

Wondering if her choice of fur had a special significance, he considered that he may have been reading more into the selection than perhaps her mind could conceive. Aside from the furry animal in question, urban dictionary shone an unusual light on the word. A verbatim transposition...

A 'cheeky' trickster, it said, used to describe something riddled with contradictions, surprises and intrigue. And the irony of the word was that it was usually used in direct conflict with an opposite usage or meaning.

Not even mentioning the British slang, "minky"…used to describe a woman's desirable sex or her genitalia directly.

This was a literal copy and paste. Trues Bob. For one thing urban dictionary was not known for, was subtlety. And it never catered to any delicate sensibilities.

Which had he known all this then, wouldn't have surprised him when she relaxed her death grip on the lapels of her coat and dropped the Mink to the floor, thereby revealing her almost nude body.

Yeah, almost. She wore Manolos. Or could've been Louboutins.

He was an Avery; he knew Designer Drag when he saw it. And red-soled shoes flaunted it.

His expectation was to be bombarded with self-tipped-off Paparazzi. It felt like that was what she was going for since, ironically, she was unrecognizable as any kind of celebrity. Any part of any celeb? Neither famous nor infamous was she; famously infamous may-be? Imposterologist…wannabe!

One who needed work done?

This looked to be another job done on the DL. The down low. Oh brother! Plastic Man to the rescue. He really needed to work on his Superhero alter-ego. Plastic Man made it sound like  _he_  was created from that polymeric substance. While his day job was his bread and butter work, unfortunately, he could still hope that Patient Plastic had some medical-journal write-up type deformity. Something that he could sink his teeth into.

Well, okay then. Certainly a novel approach to a consult. Not to mention, unconventional. Definitely an original experience for him; a patient all up in his grill with no concept of where the boundaries between personal space and professional etiquette lay. These Hollywood types were positively eccentric. To each his own, he reckoned.

He began the consult.

"Alright, what do we have here...Ms…?" he turned to check her file, but was stopped by the grating sound of a put-upon voice. She was apparently trying to sound…sexy? Mysterious? Would this be the time to start worrying that she was coming on to him?

"Melly…Kinka Melly," she replied, accompanying her name with an obvious wink.

Well, that didn't reassure him…at all. However, he would be the professional and give her the benefit of the doubt. She very clearly needed the work done.

"Okay then Ms. Melly, let's get on with this."

"Kinka, please," she once again interrupted, once again winked.

This was just getting weirder and weirder, and more worrying, by the second. Also, was it just him, but what parent gave their child a name that could so easily be rhymed with Kinky? Slutty, anyone? Kinda like Phoebe Freebie. He fondly recalled  _that_  naming conversation that he'd had with April during their first pregnancy.

"So…is there anything in particular you want to have done?" And the lightbulb clicked. Of course! She was being anonymous. Going incognito. That explained the winking too. Damn pseudo-actresses…did they not know the term 'doctor-patient confidentiality'?

"You tell me, Dr. Avery. You come highly recommended." Once again with the winking.

He was starting to wonder if perhaps an involuntary eye twitch was her problem. For that she needed…Neuro, right?

He began the cataloguing

"Right. So a Liquid facelift with strategically placed Botox and fillers, pulling and lifting the face. Eye lift surgery to remove the fat bags from under the eyes. Lip-job, again Botox fillers and a Rhinoplasty. Earlobe Lift. Chin and Jowl Liposuction. Neck too – along the Necklace line. Breast and Hip augmentation, Tummy Tuck and Lipo. Buttock Implants. Arm reduction and Thigh Lift. Knee Lipo and fillers in the Feet. Hmm, and Cankle Lipo? Also electrolysis or Laser Hair Removal?"

He wondered at her dropped jaw and open mouth and the strange sounds emitting from said cavity. Aah, comprehension. "Braces and Teeth whitening."

She continued sputtering nonsensical syllables.

He clarified. "Everything looks good. Whoever worked on you did a bang-up job, already. Except maybe for those cankles –  _that_  definitely needs work. And unless you want to go up a size or two along the buttock and breast areas? Hollywood Producers are always saying 'Go Big or Go Home' right? I suppose that's why it's called show business and not show friends."

"I beg your pardon…What?! How fucking dare you? Do you know who I am?!" Still spluttering, she was however able to somehow string together somewhat coherent words. The sentences just didn't make all that much sense. And they petered out into indignant huffs of air.

"Ehrm...you just said...do you not know who you are? Let me refer you to our resident neurologist Dr..."

"I know who I am, you buffoon! I'm Krista Smirnoff and I so obviously haven't had any work done. This is the natural me…"

"Wait, what? I thought you said your name…"

"…how dare you suggest otherwise?! You must be some kind of quack, hack. I've heard that Plastics is a money-maker but this…! Stop shaking your money-maker at me! Anyway, I have Obamacare…"

"That's not what a money-maker…you know what, nevermind."

Sure, Jan. Looks like a Psych consult was needed for this one. And she was making it impossible for him to finish a thought, let alone getting a word in edgewise.

Firstly, what was with the different names?! Even  _she_  seemed confused as to what to call herself.

And B, why was she here for a Plastics consult if she didn't want or need to correct what the ageist entertainment industry considered as flaws?

Lastly, point no.3.  _He_  was a qualified, professional Plastic Surgeon – he  _knew_  Plastics and he recognized when someone had work done. Extensively. But okay, to be fair, he  _had_  exaggerated slightly. Well except for the cankles, those calves and ankles were really confused as to their boundaries. Also, those inverted nipples…

This woman though, she was as synthetic as a silicone Barbie Doll. She was also either super smart and acting the ditsy blonde or else, no acting involved. For everyone knew that even without the repeal of Obamacare, elective cosmetic surgeries were not covered by the medical insurance carrier.

As swiftly as her crying in the Club meme analogy started, just as quickly did the false waterworks stop. He wished he could reclaim his time. He would just have to send her a hefty consult bill. But here he was faced with a bit of a conundrum. Since her details were obviously as fake news as much of her body…who from, where to and how did he recoup this loss?

"…say, how would you like to get away this weekend? My parents live in the country, Bainbridge Island. They have many, many wealthy friends looking to spend their money. And like I said, you come highly recommended…"

Those inverted nipples…

* * *

_If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me...  
_

WTF, man?!

What the hell just happened?! They'd just killed Bambi's mom!

He felt like he was in an alternate universe – The Time Travelers Husband, maybe.

Where did that deer come from? And what a way for her to go…suicide by car. The whole thing smelt fishy (gamey?) though. It had almost looked like she'd been thrown onto the windshield.

Murder? Conspiracy to kill? Venison Violence? A case for Law and Order: SVU, Special Venison Unit?

Gazing into those lifeless doe eyes caused a roiling, rumbling feeling in the pit of his stomach. It had nothing to do with the animal itself, although the death was unfortunate and a horrifying waste, but those eyes man…they reminded him of April's. Soft, kind-hearted, sad and full of reproach. She was actually the reason he was here in the first place, April was. He couldn't bear anymore bumping into her and seeing first-hand the carnage he'd caused with the divorce. And not to mention that  _other_  situation. He needed to clear his head. So he jumped at this opportunity to escape. Without as much as a by-your-leave. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

He was stumped at what to call his travelling companion. Was she a Kinka, Melly, Kelly or Krista? Admittedly he couldn't get past the cankles, so in his own mind he called her Mankles. And out loud he evaded addressing her by any of her names, nom de plumes or pseudonyms. He had not the slightest clue which was real and which alias, and neither was he interested in finding out. She was simply a means to an end; getting the hell outta dodge. The culmination of that undertaking simply being avoidance. Allowing him to live a delusion for just a little bit longer. Limbo was not a bad place to tarry.

Real life, nevertheless, found a way. See exhibit A: The cop asking to see his license. His crime…being a passenger while Black. Mankles let him have it though, she called Bullshit. He watched in resignation as the red-headed Officer – Owen Hunt, said his name badge – did absolutely nothing about her 'disrespect', 'resistance to authority' and 'arrest for resisting arrest'. The perks of white privilege. Hashtag: Blue Feelings Matter. Policing at its finest. He wondered if  _he_  had been confrontational would he have been exempted from its repercussions in the same manner, for he  _did_  possess the privilege of having light-skin. Colorism was something that darker people of color had to deal with – white passing privilege being an actual thing. Consequently, with the existence of colorism and judging from Officer Hunt's demeanor, it appeared that racism trumped all the in-between shades leading to Black.

* * *

_What's new pussycat? Whoa whoa whoa oh oh…  
_

It looked like he'd stepped into an eighteenth century plantation, except for the cotton-pickin' slaves. There  _did_  seem to be a big Black overseer type who Mankles called Ben Warren and the guy seemed to be running everything and everywhere. Dude appeared to be the family's Jack of all trades. Jackson was also introduced to the light-skinned Black housekeeper who looked remarkably like…nah it couldn't be. She was Margaret Webbery and a more poker-face he'd yet to come across. The family appeared cool and Ben and Margaret were their employees, treated as important members of their household.

Mankles surprised him. Her manner as an indicator, he didn't think she came from intelligent stock. And yet her father was Dr. Derek Shepherd, retired Neurologist and her mother Dr. Meredith Grey, practicing Psychiatrist. Apparently Bainbridge Island's population were just as messed up as anywhere else in America. The prodigal son, Alex, who for some reason held the title of Alex Karev, he met just before dinner. The bloke was still in Medical School but looked totally spaced out. High on Opiates or zonked out on Pharmaceuticals, he couldn't be sure. Drug addict brother seemed just as out of place in that family as the sister. Perhaps they were adopted children. The name difference made sense now. Who wouldn't want to hide any kinship with that? He was surprised that the guy didn't permanently reside in the basement – outa sight, outa mind.

Derek insisted on giving him the tour. "Oh you're gonna love this," he said pointing to a photo of a pasty white man in running shorts.

What was there to admire, he wondered. And  _why_  would he love a lanky, ashen skinned, knobby-kneed white boi? Did Shepherd think he was gay? And desperate?

"My dad's claim to fame," he continued, explaining the pride of place the photo had. "He was beat by Jesse Williams in the qualifying round of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, where…"

"Wait, wait…Jesse Williams, that pretty-boy model turned mediocre actor? I didn't know he was an athlete. Holding his age huh? Maybe developing a  _slight_  paunch," he snorted. "He doesn't look a day over fabulous though." Okay he heard it that time. He understood why Shepherd was showing him pictures of fellas. He sounded like he had a crush on JW. This seemed to be hinting at dangerous levels of narcissism. A grandiose ego. An extreme, inflated sense of vanity.

"What are you talking about? Who is Jesse Williams? And why are we discussing him?"

"That doctor actor…actor doctor…and  _you_  brought him up."

"You must have misheard. I said Jesse Owens. Owens. O-wen-ens. He beat my father during the 1936 Berlin Olympics qualifier where Owens won in front of Hitler. I doubt your Jesse Williams could do that?"

"He's not  _my_  anything…you know what, forget it."

Shepherd laughed. "Relax, I'm just messin' with you. You do kinda look a bit like him. If you squint or scrunch your eyes just so," he proceeded to demonstrate. Further shocking Jackson by placing his hands on Jackson's face and examining it as one would expect a brood-mare was inspected, down to the teeth. "Hopefully you're a better doctor than he is an actor."

Now that gropeage wasn't creepily inappropriate at all. Bordering on homoerotic. Perhaps getting out of dodge hadn't been his wisest course of action. Looks like he'd leapt from the frying pan into the fire. His instinct for self-preservation was on full alert and he really needed to tread with care…it seemed that the inmates had taken over this asylum.

* * *

_It's not unusual to be loved by anyone. It's not unusual to have fun with anyone...  
_

What was up with Ben? Not only was he almost mowed down by the buff athletic-built hunk of testosterone as he ran out in the darkness, which was an oddity in the first place, but the fellow had seemed to be in a trance, totally ignoring him. And that earlier handshake? Like the nod of acknowledgement all Black Men gave each other – the unwritten Bro code – how was it that Ben Warren was clueless about either? Here in the not South, South, Black people were behaving quite oddly. He was bewildered by their almost zombielike subservience. They seemed to be possessed by the spirit of Uncle Tom – "It's like they missed the movement," he murmured to himself in a hushed undertone.

Yet another surprise awaiting him as he stepped back into the house, deciding to call it a night…Dr. Grey.

"What brings you to our humble home?" she asked inviting him to sit with her as she indulged in that English pastime of a 'spot of tea'. "Or should I say who?" a wink accompanied. Like mother like daughter, apparently.

"No, it's nothing like that. I just met her…we're not…" He was bemused. How to delicately explain to this professional mind delver that her own daughter was – to put it in the specialized terminology of head shrinkers – cuckoo, and that he was just here for a break away from his real life. "I actually don't know…"

"Oh, I think you know why you're here."

"No, I don't think I do." He used to be indecisive but now he wasn't so sure…

"Oh I think you think you don't – but we both know you do."

Was this woman trying to spin circles around him? "Really eloquent…your ability to articulate…quite amazing."

"Hmm…thank you."

Was that sarcasm in response to his own or was everyone in this family just clueless, he wondered.

"So what were you doing out there? Smoking? It's a filthy habit. One I can get rid of for you. And since you're with Krista, I insist that you let me help you stop."

"I don't smoke. And I'm not with anybody, especially not your…Krista? I'm actually her…" he stopped himself just in time. Hippocratic Oath. Doctor/Patient Confidentiality. These were not just terms. It was a code he lived by.

"Hmm…" Meredith Grey smiling was creepy. Like her daughter, she seemed to be a dog with a bone. "So what are your vices then Jackson Avery? I'm at your disposal."

"I really don't need a Psychiatrist, but thank you for the offer." He was grateful for his in-bred Avery manners, even if his words were gritted through a tightly clenched jaw.

She wrinkled her nose then gazed at him weirdly and he realized he was wearing a 'shit-eating Joker' grin. Or if he was being his normal indelicate self, it was that quizzical expression you wore when you let out a lil' fart in company and were waitin' to see if it smelt or nah...

There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He was perfect. Just ask his mother. Well…there was that one thing. It was something only April knew, something she'd found out by accident and early into their acquaintanceship. Actually she'd cottoned on to the ramifications of it quite down the road.

He vividly recalled that first accidental incident…

She'd mistakenly taken his bag instead of hers and since he didn't know her name then he yelled, "YOU IN THE YELLOW SHIRT," but she didn't respond. So he yelled, "HEY AS…SHORT-STUFF," when he finally caught up with her…and apparently her shirt was red?

Nothing had registered then though. That first meeting was brief.

Not long after they'd been paired in a lab and since he'd been unable to tell different colors apart, he'd been copying her answers. She'd thought he was a cheat. Until he got used to her and continuously would ask, "What color is this?" Later, she'd laughingly told him that he was "this close" – a tiny space between her forefinger and thumb – to getting punched out by her.

What had been the most fun though was when he deliberately pulled her leg. Well, not that time with the tomato…

What had happened was that he thought the tomato was ripe, but it was actually green and when she saw him take a bite out of it she'd whispered, "Hardcore".

The amusing part of this anecdote was the fact that she was too polite to tell him that the colors of his outfits clashed horribly – a truly revolting, gaggie inducing combination. But the joke was on her, because he knew exactly what colors they were. There's an app for that. There's apps for any and every thing nowadays. He simply enjoyed the torment of making her eyes bleed. A figurative blood-letting, of course.

* * *

_I feel so brokenhearted, I knew the day we started that we were meant to be._

_Ooh ooh, I'm missing you, tell me why the road turns…_

"Where did you go off to just then?"

"Can February March? No, but April May," he laughed. "Remembering April…"

"What happened in April?"

"Not the month, the person."

"Is she…?"

"Yes. The love of my life. My soulmate. My one."

"Why are you not with her right now?"

"We're divorced. It's complicated."

"Uncomplicate it for me."

Would that tapping of the spoon on the side of her porcelain cup just stop already? But wait, it was so mesmerizing. He felt like he was sinking into the floor.

"Samuel…" he whispered.

He was jolted awake. What the actual fuck?! Where was he? This didn't feel like any waking up disorientation. How did he get here? The last thing he remembered…What The Fuck was the last thing he remembered?! His memory was hazy. Wait…did something happen? Did Meredith Grey actually try to hypnotize him?

He turned his head to the side and his eyes almost bugged out. Nooo…it couldn't be. Could it? No, he wasn't that stupid.

"What are you doing here KK? We've discussed this…can you not…please go and put on some clothes." He still wasn't sure of her name, Krista or Kinka? All he knew was that she was one K short of a white sheet.

"But-but…we…" Her petulance gave it away.

"We nothing. I'm your doctor and nothing more. Have a little pride girl. Now please, go to your room and get dressed."

"This is actually my room. They gave you my room to use, but whatever," she sulked and under her breath she mumbled something he couldn't quite catch about Instagram and her twitter followers.

Which was a weird segue, right? Unless she was low-key stalking him on twitter? Or since he was divorced was she making it seem like he was into her?

He simply had to roll his eyes at the immaturity she displayed. She was a grown woman for Christ's sake. And childishly sparing with teens on twitter – or so he'd heard some colleagues claim was the new social media interaction. Throwing shade and bullishly trolling was apparently the new assertive. To him it displayed a lack of class, and the antagonistic bullying of youngsters actually fell under the awnings of predatory conduct.

He'd also heard about a term called Sealioning. The name given to a specific, pervasive form of aggressive cluelessness, which masqueraded as a sincere desire to understand. A type of Internet trolling, he'd read, the purpose of which was not clarification or elucidation, but rather attempting to derail a discussion or wearing down the patience of an opponent. He wondered if she was sealioning. Or was the word meant to be used more in the context of intellectual discourse?

That girl and clothes though, or rather lack of them…he just shook his head. Her exhibitionism seemed to be some attention-seeking pattern of behavior. And he didn't need to be Freud to come-up with that. He was itching to get his scalpel on her though. And no that wasn't an euphemism for any male appendage. Those cankles needed him. Still not euphemistic. It was one of two remaining natural flaws in a perfectly plastic surgery masterpiece. This was his challenge.

* * *

_I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night…  
_

He hadn't expected to be guest of honor at a party this weekend. And what an eclectic bunch these were. Some were relentless in their invasion of his private space. Up close and in your face personal, to the extent that they craved and yet, contrarily, feared contact with him.

Existing while Black. That was him.

Was all that they saw of him only his Blackness? Titillating and yet terrifying them?

He felt like a piece of meat actually, put on display. Which was kinda weird when a lesbian couple sized him up. Dr. Calliope Torres was anything but shy, even to the extent of directly questioning his size. Whereas her partner, Dr. Arizona Robbins, appeared more circumspect. Were they Bi-sexual, he wondered? That could be the only reason for their objectifying gazes. He was polite though. He endured the subtle micro-aggressions from these white suburbanites.

He felt like he'd been invited to the cookout; the white version. Bland, spice-less food, copious amounts of alcohol and the rare sighting of melinated skin so shielded by insipid fashion choices as to almost disappear into the background of white noise.

"No way…," he whispered to himself. It couldn't be…April would just die. Wait until he told her. He needed to snap a quick pic…

Damn…the camera on his phone was set to flash and that really tripped him up. How was he to know that it would cause this?

"Get out! Get out, just Get out," the guy screamed at him. A fellow Black Man, one who shook a fist bump, didn't get AAVE or street slang and who screamed at him to leave. Also, someone he thought he recognized. It was disconcerting.

The professional consensus of this odd behavior, by the Shepherd-Grey duo of doctors, was: "Seizures creating anxiety, which triggers aggression."

Well, okay then. This was not his problem. They had a bead on it. He would just ignore the desperate sobs of a confused cry for help. What the hell man?!

He returned to his borrowed room to set his low battery phone to charge. He needed to call April, as soon as he had some bars.

He had to wonder at the Gazebo and the chairs facing it. He hoped to God – simply an expression, he hadn't adopted a belief system overnight – that no nuptials were planned. He suffered his own version wedding PTSD. He knew the possibility existed that April would have another one of those and he had to learn to deal. For he'd given up the right to object. She was no longer his.

He surprised a lone guest seated in the last row of those chairs, gazebo entrance side. Not exactly alone, he realized. The man had a bodyguard. Or was it a minder? The white cane the burly man held in front of him, hinted at the latter.

"Dr. Mark Sloan," the guest introduced himself, after the minder alerted him to Jackson's presence.

"Jackson Avery," he reciprocated, not feeling the need to rub his credentials in the face of a fellow professional who was so obviously unable to continue his profession.

"I know who you are, Dr. Avery."

Had he just committed an intellectual faux pas? "Wait…Dr. Mark Sloan, Plastic Surgeon? Pioneer, Genius, Perfectionist. Ultimate Master of Correction. That Mark Sloan?"

"Yes. Modesty prevents me from telling you to go on. However…all that you say is true. But bum hands and a fading eye-sight mean I've had to give all that up," he shrugged philosophically. "I've heard a lot about you though, Dr. Avery. They call you the next Mark Sloan," he laughed. "Do you mind?" he asked, confusing Jackson with the request. "Could I see your hands?" he clarified. And by see he meant feel.

"Oh…oh sure, of course." He held out his hands to be inspected.

"Perfection. Long tapered fingers. Sure, firm grip. You obviously know how to handle your instruments," he confidently stated. The seductively sly half smile he sported indicated that he was aware of his risqué double entendre. And he didn't let go of Jackson's hands. Continuing to, not unpleasantly, run his fingertips over Jackson's palms and fingers. He had a soft touch.

"Err-I should be…"

Interrupting his motions to take his leave, Mark Sloan shocked him by grabbing onto his face. He didn't pull away as he realized this was his way of 'seeing' him. "You're a pretty boy, Avery," he said before releasing him. "You can go now."

And Jackson hot-footed it out of there.

"Returning to the scene of the crime," he sarcastically quipped to himself. Not really, but not for wont of their trying. And so he happened onto another crime. "Why's my phone unplugged? Who doesn't want me in contact with the outside world?" Outside World? What the hell? Was the drama catching, he wondered. The paranoia certainly was. "What the fuck Avery? Paranoid much, huh?"

"Allow me to explain," came a soft-spoken timid voice from the doorway, startling him from the one-man conversation he was having with himself. Not a conversation, exactly, more of a peevish grumbling. "I owe you an apology. How rude of me to have touched your belongings without asking," housekeeper/maid Margaret continued in her robotic monotone. Add embarrassment to his, not meant to be heard, complaining.

"Nah, it's cool. I was just confused," he tried to save face.

"Well I can assure you there was no funny business. I lifted your cellular phone to wipe down the dresser and it accidentally came undone."

"Yeah…I don't…"

"Rather than meddle with it further, I left it that way. How foolish of me."

"It's fine. I won't snitch."

"Snitch?" her expression bemused.

"Rat you out," he explained

She still looked befuddled. "Tattle-tale?" she asked, the uncertainty clearing.

"Yeah…" What was up with all these pseudo-Black folk?! Including this Maggie look-alike.

"Oh, don't you worry about that. I can assure you I don't answer to anyone." Her face beamed but there was just something about those eyes…

"Right. All I know is sometimes if there's too many white people, I get nervous, you know?"

Her smile disappeared. Then the strangest thing happened. She looked panicked, trying unsuccessfully to get words, and strangely, sobs, out. Something creepy happened next. She laughed, as if so amused by his words while tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks.

"Oh, no. No…" she admonished as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. "No, no, no no no no no no. Aren't you something. That's not my experience. Not at all. The Shepherds are  _so_  good to us," she emphasized. "They treat us like family." And with that she departed.

"Bitch be crazy," he shook his head.

He had to suck it up and call April. Simply because. And also Harriet.

"Hey…so you won't believe who I just sorta bumped into? Oh and how's Harriet doing?"

"Jackson…what? What's going on? Why are you calling me?" After the barest of pauses, "She's fine. Down for a nap." And then, "Who, who did you bump into?" He knew her so well. She was unable to resist her inquisitive impulses.

"Jerek Deter! At least it looked just like him."

"No! Jeets? The Yankees shortstop who went missing? What's it been, like three…six…months with no trace of him? I always assumed that he was just laying low, being private you know. Coz of the cheating rumors. And of course the STDs."

"Oh yeah, I forgot about the missing part. True, he Jetere'd many women. Herpes King, I think they called him." He never would have guessed that watching baseball with April could be such fun. The nonsensical gossip he picked up…truly astounding. Not to mention the amusing pastime of creating nicknames based on said gossip. Some the media beat them to the punchline. "I wonder what he's doing here. And with that white cougar that looks old enough to be a cougar's cougar…a double cougar. Wait, I'm sending you the picture I snapped of them. Tell me what you think."

"Where is here…? Oh wait, never mind. You don't have to tell me. It's not like we talk about your comings and goings. Or anything that matters really."

"April, c'mon, what is this?"

"It's…this limbo that we're living…I donno?" he heard the hesitation in her voice.

It prompted him to ask a question he immediately regretted, "Maggie said a thing about a thing you apparently said to Maggie?"

"Yeah. And where are you now? Not here discussing it with me." He heard her exasperation with him in the huge sigh she released. "I think I need to…"

He had a feeling he knew where this was going, so he quickly interrupted her. "Listen, I have to go. Kiss my baby for me."

"Jackson…wait…" Clearly frustrated with his dodging.

He hung up on her. It was what they both did well. Avoidance.

Ruminating on April's words – predominantly the unspoken ones – he still felt the blow of them. He stood at the window. Contemplating love, life and his habit of booking it to avoid confrontation and the pain it inevitably lead to.

Surprisingly, he had a view of the gazebo. He'd thought the distance of it from the house would hide it from view. Which wasn't the case at all. He got glimpses through the surrounding trees. From his vantage point he was able to tell that some kind of auction was taking place. The Shepherds hadn't struck him as art aficionados but what did he really know about them? As he watched he was surprised to note that the almost blind Mark Sloan ended up with the winning bid. He couldn't tell what the piece was or even exactly how much the guy paid. From the reactions and the applause of the other guests, he guessed that it was a hefty sum and an enviable win. Well good for him. What's to say a sightless guy couldn't be an appreciative art connoisseur?

* * *

_At first I was afraid, I was petrified…  
_

He wondered if any art pieces existed in the Shepherd's home. His curiosity got the better of him and he ended up snooping. He knew it was wrong to rifle through that box. I mean nothing bigger than his hand would fit in there. But some instinct of self-preservation was driving him. And he was through ignoring his inner voice – it screamed "Danger".

The photographs had a tale to tell. They seemed innocuous enough but when you looked at it as a whole, a frightening pattern emerged. In it Kinka/Krista – KK – either had her arms around or was in the arms of the other someone in the photo. From the body language it was clear as day that the individuals pictured were intimately acquainted with each other. Some same sex, others opposite. Jerek Deter, Ben Warren and Margaret Webbery were three he recognized immediately. But there were scores more. So many. And the commonality of each picture, aside from the presence of KK, was that each other person was a Black person. He didn't think that this was any co-incidence.

He needed to take a page out of the guests' books – figuratively, of course – in knowing when not to overstay a welcome. They'd all blown the joint already. For him, it was time to make like a ghost and disappear. Well, considering the circumstances, that was a shitty analogy. Perhaps he should've gone with, make like an egg and beat it. But that had violent connotations. And those tingling fingers of fear were already working down his spine. So he would simply make like a bee and buzz off.

He'd tried good manners, but his desperation gave it away. The Shepherd foursome had him cornered. In the ensuing beat-down with Alex, he was not only holding his own but triumphing over the fake-ass Jiu-Jitsu Alex claimed he was an expert in. The guy just looked stupid flailing his arms, miss grappling and kick-boxing at nothing in the air. But he didn't count on the Psychiatrist's tricks. She simply tapped teaspoon to teacup and his belligerence was no more. He was out. Sinking into The Sunken Place. No one able to hear his screams.

* * *

_It took all the strength I had just not to fall apart, I'm trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart…  
_

"Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity."

Familiar but not the first words he thought he'd hear upon waking up dead.  _And_  having it come from his deceased grandmother. He was groggy, so he didn't think to question that this experience negated his belief in an afterlife. About there being anything after death. Not to mention the presence of other dearly departed.

"Grandma…what? I'm dead…" He felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. Wait. How was that possible? He reacted to what felt like a back to the head whack, April-style. "Ouch," he groaned. Were non-living beings supposed to feel pain? Or faint? Or the more manly, blackout? And he wasn't even gonna think about the people he'd left behind – April, Harriet and Catherine – or about them losing him in so idiotic a fashion. Not that he knew the manner of his death. He just knew it was due to his stupidity. His gran's homily made that clear. Any second now he would start bawling like a baby.

"You're not dead. And I am the manifestation of your subconscious. In this form. Because apparently this is the only person you listen to," the voice of his grandmother answered.

Joey really wanted to be here…But, but…she's standing in front of him…an apparition of her. GJ.

In the past it had amused him to realize that both his kids and himself shared a grandparent acronym, his was GJ for Grandma Joey and Samuel and Harriet's GJ was Grandpa Joe. Even the J part was so close…Joey, Joe…although derivatives of different names and not just a masculine and feminine version of one. She was Joanna, he was Joseph.

"Not true…I have…April. But…but I felt that smack. What…how? Is April here too?" his voice rose in excitement at the possibility. Only to plummet in despair at the thought that she would have to be dead too.

He was really confused. Was he in fact passed on – did he not pass go and not collect $200? No wait…that was go directly to jail, not to afterlife. Although, he supposed, if you believed in that sorta thing, then equating hell with jail was not so farfetched.

But why was GJ here telling him otherwise, that he wasn't the Late, Great Jackson Avery? Then again she did mention that she wasn't actually present in any corporeal form. That she was simply a reflection of his intuition. His brain hurt. To top it all off, he was immobilized and his vision was blurry and severely restricted.

"It would help if you opened your eyes fully." The ever-pragmatic voice of his GJ instructed.

Aah. He was shackled to a chair. Explained why he couldn't move. It was a relief to not be dead.

He strained against the restraints, but to no avail. He was strapped in tight. Upright, though. In an armchair, no less. Which looked to be in a man-cave basement room. Guessing from the foosball table (or was it a pool table?) and huge-ass stuffed male deer on the wall. Also, a really old-fashioned television cabinet that included a tiny set, was the other occupant of the room.

"So…how's life Jackie? I heard it on the grapevine that you interrupted a wedding, got the bride to run away with you, eloped to Lake Tahoe, divorced her and then had a child – my only great grandchild, I believe – with her? Gold-digging tramp eh?" GJ decided to pass the time by giving him the third degree. "Very unbecoming of an Avery, my boy. I thought you'd be able to spot a fake ass out to trap you. But no matter. You fixed up the situation by getting rid of her. I hope you have an airtight pre-nup and custody arrangement."

"What?! No! Now's really not the time…or place, Grandma J? I need to get out of these straps," he replied as he strained against them, looking for any room to maneuver. "And April's not like that at all."

"April, hmm? Sounds fake. Is she a person or a month? She must be some kind of femme fatale. I mean look at where you are, the situation you find yourself in? She probably played the damsel in distress and you fell for it, right? Always rescuing the wounded birds, even when you were little."

He somehow managed to roll his eyes. "That's not April at all, Grandma.  _She_  rescues  _me_.  _She_  validates  _me_. I'm not here because of her." His softly voiced words were almost inaudible towards the end. "Wait…I know what you're doing? You're pulling that reverse psychology crap on me! I know you too, remember?"

"No-one's good enough for my grandbaby!" she transitioned without interruption. Then reverted to the topic of her ex-granddaughter-in-law once again. "Well at least you divorced her ass," she overrode his observations. "What did she do to you, my darling boy? Did you catch her cheating? Was she after your money…wait, did she steal from you? Run away with your best friend? Refuse your conjugal rights – did she not satisfy you, huh?"

"I'm not discussing my sex life with you GJ! Inappropriate as hell," he mumbled the last to himself. Evidenced by Montana and his inability to have that conversation with her after, but sex with April was mind-blowing. It wasn't a fact he wished to share with his grandmother though. Alive or dead. His grandmother, not April. He definitely was no Necrophiliac. Nor was he someone with a predilection towards blood relatives. He did not partake in anything even remotely in the vicinity of incest.

"Did you do a DNA test? Is that child even yours?"

"I don't…didn't…need to do any tests. Harriet is mine. April has only ever been mine," he testily responded.

"Why did you divorce her then? In fact why did you interrupt her wedding and why did you then marry her yourself? Did she try to trap you with a pregnancy?" And then, totally out of the blue, "You know you could've had my Limoges cake topper, if you hadn't eloped?"

He scoffed at the Limoges. "I know…I'm sure it's lovely." He'd already heard this from his mother.

"But why are you bringing up these other nonsensical scenarios?! That is not April. At all. In fact Grandpa loves her. She won him over with her direct practicality. And her efficiency. And the fact that she wasn't a fawning sycophant easily impressed by the great Harper Avery."

"Hmm, looks like she snowed your grandfather too. Must be getting soft in his old age."

"Now that's where you're wrong. He's still tough as nails. I donno how April…well no that's not right. I  _do_  know. She utterly charmed him by being herself."

"Well he is a man. You all think with the little head between your legs."

"Grandma! Really!" If he could move any part of his hands, his reddened face would be hiding behind them.

"Is she one of those blonde bimbos whose intelligence resides in their boobs?"

"What is with you GJ?! Since when do you talk like this? Like…"

"April?"

"No, like me. But yeah, a bit like her too. Honest and unfiltered April."

"You do know that I am a manifestation of your own subconscious, right? I believe I mentioned that when you first conjured me up."

"She left me, okay?! She didn't care that I lost a child too."

"She deserted you after you told her that you needed her? Now that's a stone-cold bitch."

"No…I was being strong for her. I didn't tell her that. But she should've known. And yet she went to Jordan. Twice."

"Why'd you take her back if she left you? And so callously, to run away again when you gave her an ultimatum…right?"

"Okay, I see what you did there. And you're right Gran, she didn't desert me. She went there to help and she needed to heal. I know carrying a baby and then watching him die, making that decision to spare him pain, I know that was hard for her. And that it went against her beliefs too. I couldn't help her. So I understood and I let her go. But the second time…why did she still need more time without me? She did ask me to go with, but I had commitments that I just couldn't up and leave…"

"Oh my baby, what you've been through! And did she even bother to apologize for not reading your mind?"

"Really, Gran?! I'm spilling my heart to you here."

"I'm sorry, love. But you do realize that this is you rationalizing the divorce to yourself…don't you?"

"Yeah." He hesitated for a long moment before jumping back into the convo. "And she did apologize. Before and when we went for counselling. But I don't think she meant it. She was just trying to justify her leaving. And I think our therapist agreed that she wasn't taking responsibility. So I just put a stop to it. All of it. Therapy and the marriage."

"Right. You showed her. How dare she not need you? And not know that you needed her? And resent her for both. And well for not snapping out of her grief, right? How rude was that?"

"C'mon Gran…"

"I mean why didn't she prioritize you over herself? You certainly put her first, right? Above the hospital and patients…"

"GJ," he heaved a huge sigh. "I  _do_  get it. I made mistakes too."

"The divorce being the biggest one, true?" She gave him more food for more thought.

She wasn't incorrect in her summation. He  _was_  the king of sitting like a mute ass when it mattered.

"What is really bothering you about the April situation…and Maggie?"

"Wait…how do you…?" Okay, he admitted to being a bit slow, but did she have to arch her eyebrow with quite that 'duh' mannerism? "Right, so you know everything that's in my head. Why don't you tell me why April would think that I have anything but brotherly feelings for my step-sister – you  _do_  know that mom is remarried, right? To Maggie's bio dad – and have casual sex with her? With April, I mean. When we broke up before, I moved on to Stephanie only after we were over. And it wasn't serious with her. Stephanie, I mean."

"Hmm, so you started having casual sex with Stephanie after you broke off casual sex with April?"

"No. April meant something. Stephanie was casual."

Somehow this conversation was no longer bizarre.

Perhaps it was because it was with Joey, who'd been even closer to him than Catherine ever was and it was second nature to confide in her once again. He'd had that sort of relationship with someone else too…April. When she was his friend and confidant. But since this was about her…and since they'd passed that stage a long time ago…

Also, as had been pointed out to him multiple times, this was basically him working out the situation for himself. Joey was a figment of his unconscious mind.

"When you stood up at April's wedding, declaring your feelings," she literally rolled her eyes at him, "you were still sleeping with Stephanie?"

"Ummh…yeah…" It was hard to be embarrassed without the use of his hands. He would be moving his collar and rubbing the back of his neck otherwise. Giving GJ a view of his bowed head.

"So did April believe you when you told her you loved her?"

"Of course she did. She'd told me the same before. Twice. But I…"

"…you rejected her. I can see why she's not jumping with joy at the thought of intimacy with you."

"No, I didn't believe her. Or rather I didn't think she knew what she wanted," he replied to her interruption. "Wait, what…what do you mean GJ? Do you think she thinks that I think about Maggie as another Stephanie?"

"No…I think that she thinks that you think that  _she's_  another Stephanie to you."

"I don't understand…"

"Basically you were having meaningless sex with one someone until feelings hit – or until you manned up and admitted to those feelings – for someone else. She's afraid that you had sex with her while patiently waiting or suppressing your feelings for the other woman who's not her. It's your pattern."

She would not give him an inch, the benefit of the doubt or a break.

"No. That can't be it. No."

"I'm disappointed that you use Robert's rejection as a crutch, an excuse to throw away love. I always thought that telling you the story about John and me would influence you to find true love. Maybe you did. But seems the one lesson I forgot to impart was keeping that love. What I wouldn't have given to have more time with John? And yet you throw away love so casually, so easily."

Whoa. Now this felt really real. How was it that he was able to channel his grandmother so accurately? Coz he knew, yes, that the purpose behind her sharing her love story had always been to encourage him to never settle for anything less than the equivalent of what she'd shared, for a short while, with her John.

"You are the generation of casual replacement. There's that word again." He heard the sad resignation in her voice. "Fast food, convenient sex, inability to commit, drive-through divorce. Fungible nomenclature. And you've been blessed with so much. Is that why it's so easy for you to simply discard and replace? Throwing away Limoges for Tupperware...?"

"I did your grandfather a great disservice, though. Not in marrying him or not divorcing him. I mean, I  _did_  learn to love him but I somehow always made him know that he was my second choice. His bitterness is all because of me."

Grandma Joey was really getting philosophical. Wait, but these were his thoughts right? Sooo confusing. Was this an infiltration of his subconscious – an Inception? So who was Leonardo DiCaprio'd here? Was it him? Or was he his own grandmother, who in turn was Leo? His mind was boggled.

"Are we bound to see our mistakes repeated, you think? Regret is not something I wanted for you, especially when you have the choice and the opportunity to be with the one you love."

He had no words. And this final monologue of hers needed to be heard by him. This original style self-introspection.

"Be careful what you wish for…"

* * *

_Did you think I'd crumble? Did you think I'd lay down and die?_

_Oh not I, I will survive…_

The television blared to life. And what do you know? Knobby-kneed, Olympic Track Qualifier for the 1936 Games, Old Man Shepherd himself. With what was – considering Jackson's current status of bondage and discipline – a frightening presentation.

"… _you have been chosen because of the physical advantages you've enjoyed your entire lifetime. With your natural gifts and our determination we could both be part of something greater…something perfect. The Coagula Procedure is a man-made miracle. Our Order has been developing it for many, many years, and it wasn't until recently it was perfected by my own flesh and blood. My family and I are honored to offer it as a service to members of our group."_

Ohhkaay. Well that didn't sound racist, elitist or terrifying all at once. The only reason the guy didn't sport a white sheet, he guessed, was his pride in this concocted scheme as well as an in-bred conceit at not having to hide his identity. Added to that the arrogant certainty of no repercussions. Another non-incentive was that there was no expectation that the Black Man would live to tell the tale, or even identify these cuckoo-bird KKKers. A disturbing rationale.

Okay, so not only  _one_  reason.

Old man Shepherd continued, anticipating the obvious reaction of anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in that hot seat.  _"Don't waste your strength, don't try to fight it. You can't stop the inevitable. And who knows, maybe one day you'll enjoy being members of the family._ _Behold_ _the Coagula…"_

Damn, he'd stumbled into the worst type of cult a Black Person could be in. One evidently meant for said Black individual to play the part of 'sacrificial lamb'. There really was only one way to express the discombobulation he experienced at this situation he found himself in..."Fuck!"

His heart just pooped its pants. In fear...

The Shepherds were so preoccupied with whether they could, that they didn't even stop to think if they should.

Before he could process anything more, while still continuously attempting to loosen the ties that bound him, the picture on the screen was replaced by the hated porcelain tea cup and accompanying teaspoon. Stirring round and round. He swore that if he ever got out of this, he would ban tea as a beverage of choice for anyone of his acquaintance. And he was lights out.

"Hey Avery, how's it going buddy? You can answer, there's an intercom in the room."

"What…what? Who…Mark Sloan…?"

"I'm supposed to answer any er-outstanding questions, concerns you may have so far. Apparently, our common understanding of the process has a positive impact on the success rate of the procedure."

Yeah right. He snorted in response to Sloan's BS.

"You could give a shit, right? Okay. Just…lemme just tell you what it is. Phase 1 was the hypnotism – that's how they sedate you. Phase 2 is-is this. Mental Preparation. It's basically a psychological pre-op."

"Pre-op?" he was forced to ask.

"For Phase 3. The Transplantation. Well, partial actually. The piece of your brain connected to your nervous system needs to stay put, keeping those intricate connections intact. So you won't be gone, not completely. A sliver of you will still be in there somewhere. Limited consciousness. And you'll be able to see and hear what your body is doing but your existence will be as a passenger. An audience. You'll live…"

"…The Sunken Place…" He was horrified. He'd expected death, not this indeterminate state. Death was infinitely preferable to limbo.

"Yep." Sloan's gesture was blasé. "That's-that's what she calls it," his grin was giddily evil. "Now I'll control the motor functions so I'll be…"

"Me. You'll be Me."

"Good. Good. You got it quick. Good on you," Sloan patronized him. "You know a mind is a terrible thing to waste," he smiled to himself. "Ain't that a kick in the head?" Double, double entendre. Both ironically insensitive.

"Why us, huh? Why…Black People?"

Sloan laughed, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "Who knows? People wanna change. Some people want to be stronger, faster, cooler. Some want a pseudo-immortality. And to some Black is in fashion. But don't, please don't lump me in with that. You know, I could give a shit what color you are. No. What I want is deeper. I want your eye man…I want those things you see through. Yeah, those retina's process information. But do you know why…why would we ever remove the wisest of our teeth? Oh, and I want your hands too."

"This is crazy."

"I have nothing against you. In fact I quite like you. I chose you to be the host body of my consciousness, didn't I? In another world, perhaps we could've been 'The Plastics Posse'…kicking surgical ass and taking names."

"You're a fucking lunatic," he replied. The arrogant prick actually thought he was paying him the highest compliment? What a douche!

"Alrighty then. We're done here," he spoke to either of the Shepherds, father or son, off-screen.

Regardless, the question had been a valid one. He was in this situation only because of the color of his skin.

Dear Black Man…If you weren't so valuable and didn't have the potential to be so powerful, the world would not be so hell bent on exterminating your very existence.

Dear World…To level the playing field, you need to ultimately dismantle the intimate pervasiveness of anti-Blackness.

* * *

_Rescue me, take me in your arms. Rescue me, I want your tender charms...  
_

"Where's GJ when I need her?" was the thought that popped into his head when he surfaced for the third time from the cup and saucer sedative. There she was, in his corner. Lifting her finger to her lips, she pantomimed a shushing motion, alerting him to silence. He was circumspect this time, not letting on that he was awake. From his previous tête-à-tête with the guy who purchased him – he wondered how much he'd gone for…had the value of a Black Man appreciated over time? – he knew there was only an old-fashioned intercom system in this waiting room. He doubted that they'd sprung for a motion detector, so he intended to get loose and get out.

Easier said than done. Those leather straps were immovable. Like he was fastened into a straitjacket.

But…he noticed a visitor. The tiny company reminded him of the story where a Chinese guy temporarily forgot the English word for "mouse" but needed to report one to his hotel's staff so he called down and said, "You know Tom and Jerry? Jerry is here."

Jerry was present. In a sterile environment, Jerry was obviously a foe. Perhaps Jerry could help him out here. He went with the adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The Shepherds and their anything but meticulous planning didn't account for one Avery Plastic Surgeon. Looks like they'd become complacent over time or simply relied on pure dumb luck. He had Joey and Jerry; his secret weapons. The triple J's were more than a match for that foolishly feebleminded feather-brained foursome. Or, as he'd figured out who Ben and Margaret actually were, the sociopathic sextet.

Jerry had managed to gnaw away part of the leather covering of the armchair. A small part that was within close proximity to his fingers. This allowed him to remove a little chunk of the cotton stuffing, enough to custom create a primitive set of ear plugs. He scoffed quietly to himself at the cotton pickin' slave analogy. That rudimentary item not only saved his life, but led to seven other deaths. Six Shepherds and one Mark Sloan were toast.

Brother Alex, the first casualty, was brought down by Artisanal Bric-a-Brac in the shape of melons. Assuming that he was still hypnotically sedated (thank you Jerry ear-plugs for rendering that ineffective), Alex had untied him and left him unsupervised. That had been his downfall for Jackson had smashed the melon ball to the back of his head and he'd been down for the count. What had sealed his fate later however, had been meeting the pointy end of two items – a letter opener and Jackson's boots – when he'd attempted to stop Jackson from leaving.

Father Derek was next, courtesy of the stuffed deer gracing the wall. Bambi's dad perhaps? A fitting revenge that the proud animal would surely have appreciated – antlers through the jaw, reaching into the brain-doctors brain.

Retired Doctor Mark Sloan, scull-cap already disposed, had lain open-brained on an operating table, awaiting a doctor whose own brain was mush. What caused his ultimate doom could have been the absence of a replacement brain (probably not, coz he figured that if the Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow could survive without a brain…) or the fire started when Shepherd knocked over a candelabra during his death throes. What was the purpose of burning candles in that environment was anyone's guess. Anyway, he thought it fitting that the old Plastic Surgeon probably met his demise brainless and with severe burns and scarring caused by fire.

On his way up from the basement he'd come across Grandmother Margaret, who simply scurried away in fear. This had lead him to bumping into Mother Meredith and the bitch had tried it. He simply got to it first, knocking the cup from the table, smashing it to smithereens. She managed to grab and plunge a letter opener into his palm. But he was hyped up on adrenalin and he  _did_  possess the natural abilities that made him their candidate in the first place. So even with a sharp object protruding from his hand, he managed to weaponize the item, turning it on her. Hence the Head Shrink had her head shrunk, via letter opener through the eye socket.

Throughout the ruckus caused by the growing count of dead bodies and one fire, not a peep was heard out of KK, the ultimate deceitful criminal. She was the honey-trap in the racist family business, luring Black People into non-consensual lobotomies. Body-snatched, they were, for the benefit of an older, rich, white clientele.

Since he was weakened from blood loss and his ordeal, he chose not to seek her out but simply to make his escape. The authorities could deal with her. He grabbed an unattended cell phone and car keys on his way out and as luck would have it (finally!) these items aided in the remaining three mortalities.

Where Grandmother Margaret popped out from he didn't know. But he did brake the purloined white Corvette when he heard, and felt, the impact of body hitting car. He knew who and who she was…both of her and despite everything he let emotion overtake logic. The single track of tears she'd shed before, moved him. As well as her uncanny resemblance to his step-sister. Sentiment overrode his good sense and it almost cost him. She was only the Shepherd Grandmother as she screeched and pummeled at him for destroying  _her_  house. But it cost her too. This time tree met car and unbelted as she was the impact lost her all her lives.

Very quickly he found KK. Or, rather she found him. Shotgun toting, white KK. She didn't slow him down though. "Nope. Not today, Satan," he murmured to himself, limping away from the wreckage and trying to hobble as fast as possible out of gun-shot range. He didn't anticipate Grandfather Ben tackling him to the ground whilst struggling to strangle the life out of him. Attempting to cut-off his oxygen supply may have sent a burst of desperation to his brain, for the plan came to him. In a split-second and out of KK view, he managed to whip out the cell-phone and hit Ben with a flash photo. He remembered what it had done to Jerek Deter and hoped for a similar result. A reprieve, at least. And it worked. Better than even he could have anticipated. Taking the gun from Daughter Krista/Kinka, Ben shot her point blank in the abdomen. Then proceeded to blow his own brains out.

She was still alive. This woman who'd tried, unsuccessfully but with no credit to her, to murder him. To cause him to exist in an eternal hell as a passenger, with no escape. He proceeded to choke the remaining life out of her. A vehicles lights shone its high beams onto that scene, siren accompanied. Looked vaguely like a cop-car. The door opened and KK, sensing rescue, immediately cultivated a plot to indict him and cause her to be the white victim of a deranged Black Man. And considering the number of fatalities, he guessed the spin would be 'Serial Killer'.

"Help…Help me," she croaked.

His Crime: Killing their game.

The Verdict: Guilty as charged.

Danger! Not only will this kill, it will hurt the whole time you're dying…

* * *

_I wanna run to you, I wanna run to you…_

_Won't you hold me in your arms, And keep me safe from harm…_

If horror films had taught him anything, it's that you always wanna be able to run faster than your friends. You can always make new friends.

"How did you…?"

"I'm Bailey, I know everything."

He felt a back-to-the-head slap, from behind him. "What…ouch?!"

"Also her," Miranda Bailey motioned, thumb pointing to the backseat passenger.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." He tried a bit of levity, hoping to cool April's ire. If you looked closely one could almost see the steam shooting through her head and ears.

"Duh. You don't say? It'd be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack, Jackass."

He winced. He deserved the attack on his moronic level of intellect. He'd also earned every insulting jibe she could come up with. If it wasn't for her, he knew that the least that would have happened would have been his arrest for multiple murders instead of the actuality of leaving Krista Mankles to the ignominious death she deserved.

Let that sick community try and explain what was about to be discovered there and how they were not complicit in the crimes of stealing Black Lives.

"Why are you doing such dumb shit, Jackson?"

"In my defense, I was left unsupervised…" Still with the jests. He couldn't seem to stop. If he got serious, the true impact of what had almost happened would hit him. And he knew he would lose it.

To distract himself, he looked towards Dr. Bailey, whose lips were curled in a slight smirk as she listened to their bickering while driving them away from "The Sunken Hell", and he considered the fact that April had managed to convince  _their Chief_  that he needed rescuing.

He reflected on a recent phrase he'd heard, "Don't mistake meanness for strength. It ain't." Dr. Bailey might be gruff exterior, but she wasn't mean. Or mean-spirited. And neither was April either of those. They both were the strongest women he knew, though.

* * *

_It won't be easy, you'll think it strange, when I try to explain how I feel._

_Don't cry for me, Argentina. The truth is, I never left you…_

Inverted nipples. What the…

Did he just experience an Inception dream-sequence in the reflection of an inverted nipple? The life of a Plastic Surgeon was no joke. And he was gaping like a fool. His Mink dropping consult was preening like a peacock, evidently assuming an interest that wasn't there.

Two simultaneously occurring happenings snapped him out of his hypnotic daze. Had he learned nothing from that seemingly clairvoyant event? From that frightful alternate reality brought to a movie theatre near him? And by means of a precognitive cheat sheet that he'd miraculously been privy to?

The first was a ghostly back to the head whack. Grandma Joey, with a stern no-no frown aimed at his would-be patient, followed by an eye-roll and audacious wink to him. Clearly, he was the only one that could see her, but the sting of the smack confused him. Phantom pain, maybe? Anyway, he got the message. He'd never had any intention of going there anyway.

"Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were with a patient, Dr. Avery." And that was the second happenstance – April-Harriet interruptus. A brief disturbance as she exited the examination room swiftly, baby in tow. He felt like he hadn't seen his princess in like forever.

Wait, what was happening to his speech? Had he actually been body-snatched? Whose brain did he have?

Nah, he was just deflecting from April having seen him appear to be mesmerized by the knockers on a nude patient. Her eyes seemed to scream, "How dare you make me see that with my own two eyes?" This was not the manner of consults, and she knew this. He probably had some 'splaining to do. Which he was anxious to get to. After he evicted the brain transplant recruiter.

Since he couldn't be sure that the experience wasn't simply his imagination playing wild tricks on him, he gave diplomacy a shot. Also, he  _was_  still an Avery, with all its connotations. That meant good manners bred to the bone. But he did sorta put his foot in it…deliberately maybe?

"I'm sorry, Ms. Mankles, I mean Cankles…err Melly…sorry…its K..Smirnoff right? Anyway, I apologize but I'm unable to take on your case. I do, however have a list of recommendations. They're all top notch and will be able to render any corrective surgery you require Ms. Mankles."

"But…but…"

"I'll leave the list with the nurse outside. Please get dressed and see yourself out." He left no space for any prevarications from her and no time to respond. It was a done deal. Never let it be said that he didn't heed the universe's red flags. "Oh and by the way…on behalf of all Black Men, stay away from us."

* * *

_Don't make me close one more door, I don' wanna hurt anymore._

_Stay in my arms if you dare, Or must I imagine you there._

_Don't walk away from me...I have nothing, nothing, nothing_

_If I don't have you, you, you, you, you…_

He expected that he'd have to hunt her down as interactions between the two of them recently seemed to be only that of a relay race, with Harriet as the baton being handed off to the other person. Even though they still lived in the same house, they were ships passing in the night. With no meaningful communication, but simply a distant tooting of their horns as they passed each other by. A situation he felt that she was out to change. It was why he'd avoided her for so long. But no more. Life was short and he'd had a rude awakening. Uncomfortable, emotional spillage required. He was up to the task.

He was surprised to find her outside the examination room still. But Harriet-less. Before he could wonder and voice the question, he spotted some movement from the corner of his eye. Harriet in pink, in the arms of Catherine in black. Quite the cute combination. Swiveling his neck to get a better view wasn't the best plan, he learned. A back to the head smack and a "Really, Jackson?!" and April was on the move.

Rubbing the sore spot, he smiled. Progress. He turned his gaze back towards his mother and his child only to find a third presence making up that triumvirate. His grandmother, mother and daughter all smiled in amusement, then let out huge belly laughs turning their view towards the retreating back of the fourth and most important woman in his life. Wordlessly prompting him to add her to their triad, they thus forming the quartet of women that Jackson Avery would love throughout his lifetime.

Chief Bailey, not to be left out, and someone he would always appreciate for the rescue – be it real or imagined – querulously harrumphed before allowing herself the slightest of smirks. She cut her eyes towards the hallway where April had just been and with the barest of nods gave her own permission.

"Go on, Avery. Get out."


	7. Jackson, We've Met Before by Demitruli

**Jackson, We've Met Before**

_1920 –_   _Moline, Ohio_

The pain baffled me.

Exactly that - I was baffled. I couldn't understand, couldn't make sense of what was happening. All I was aware of was the heat, the torturing flames that licked my skin demolishing everything in their path. But what I soon came to realize was that there was, in fact, no fire. I was not covered in flames. I was not burning alive –at least, not physically.

And in terror, I realized that the heat was inside me.

The burning grew - rose and peaked and rose again until it surpassed anything I'd ever felt. I wanted to raise my arms and claw my chest open and rip the heart from it - anything to get rid of this torture. But I couldn't feel my arms, couldn't move one vanished finger.

The fire blazed hotter and I wanted to scream. To beg for someone to kill me now, before I lived one more second in this pain. But I couldn't move my lips. There was a weight there, pressing on me. And in shock, I realized it was my own body. So heavy. Burying me in the flames that were chewing their way out from my heart now, spreading with impossible pain through my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up my throat, licking at my face.

Why couldn't I move? Why couldn't I scream?

And most importantly, if I couldn't scream, how could I tell someone to kill me?

All I wanted was to die. Nothing could outweigh this pain. Wasn't worth living through it for one more heartbeat.

_Let me die, let me die, let me die._

And, for a never-ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and my soundless shrieks pleading for death to come. Nothing else, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. One infinite moment of pain.

The endless burn raged on.

It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again.

Two things happened together, grew from each other so that I didn't know which came first: time restarted and I got stronger.

I could feel the control of my body come back to me in increments, and those increments were my first markers of the time passing. I knew it when I was able to twitch my toes and twist my fingers into fists. Still, the fire did not decrease one tiny degree - in fact, I began to develop a new capacity for experiencing it, a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through my veins.

My hearing got clearer and clearer, and I could count the frantic, pounding beats of my heart to mark the time.

I could count the shallow breaths that gasped through my teeth.

I continued to get stronger, my thoughts clearer. Through all this, the racking fire went right on burning me. But there was so much space in my head now. Room to think. Room to wonder.

Room to freak out.

Where was I? What was happening to me?

The panic that suddenly rose through me had my breathing go frantic, and I knew I couldn't afford that. How else was I supposed to measure the time that passed? I tried to control my breath, counting the seconds.

Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred seventeen and a half seconds later, the pain changed.

On the good-news side of things, it started to fade from my fingertips and toes. Fading slowly, but at least it was doing something new. This had to be it. The pain was on its way out...

And then the bad news. The fire in my throat wasn't the same as before. I wasn't only on fire, but I was now parched, too. Dry as a bone. So, thirsty. Burning fire, and burning thirst...

Also bad news: The fire inside my heart got hotter.

How was that possible?

My heartbeat, already too fast, picked up - the fire drove its rhythm to a new frantic pace.

The flames retreated from my palms, leaving them blissfully pain-free and cool. But it retreated to my heart, which blazed hot as the sun and beat at a furious new speed. My wrists were free, though, and my ankles. The fire was totally extinguished there.

And then - oh!

My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. The pain was enough to stun me, to break through my iron grip on the stake. My back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging me upward by my heart.

I allowed no other piece of my body to break rank as my torso slumped back to the ground.

It became a battle inside me - my sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire. Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible; my heart galloped toward its last beat.

The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice and then thudded quietly again just once more.

There was no sound. No breathing. For a moment, the absence of pain was all I could comprehend.

And then I opened my eyes and gazed at me in wonder.

And everything was so  _clear_.

Sharp. Defined.

The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright, and yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.

Behind the light, I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above. In front of it, I could see the dust motes in the air, the sides the light touched, and the dark sides, distinct and separate. They spun like little planets, moving around each other in a celestial dance.

The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock; the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex. The action felt wrong. I considered, and realized the problem was that there was no relief tied to the action. I didn't need the air. My lungs weren't waiting for it. They reacted indifferently to the influx.

I did not need the air, but I liked it. In it, I could taste the room around me - taste the lovely dust motes, the mix of the stagnant air mingling with the flow of slightly cooler air from the open door. Taste a lush whiff of silk. Taste a faint hint of something warm and desirable, something that should be moist, but wasn't... That smell made my throat burn dryly, a faint echo of the venom burn.

I also heard a faint, thudding rhythm, with a voice shouting angrily to the beat. Rap music? I was mystified for a moment, and then the sound faded away like a car passing by with the windows rolled down.

With a start, I realized that this could be exactly right. Could I hear all the way to the freeway?

I froze. How did I know there was a freeway here?

I instantly tried to bring up memories of how I had gotten here in the first place but to no avail. My new mind, sharp as it seemed to be, held no memories of my trip here, or of anything else for that matter. In terror, I realized I couldn't remember anything at all. Well, anything but one thing.

_April Kepner._

I sat up so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur - but it did not. I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them.

I was April Kepner. That was my name. How I was aware of it was a mystery to me, but for the time being, it didn't matter much.

I looked around the empty room, my nostrils flaring, searching for possible danger, as if from instinct. There was a window by the door, through which I could see the forest unraveling before me. The room I had just woken up in, a little cabin as it seemed, was in the middle of the woods.

As my eyes scanned the room, they suddenly came across a figure, and at the sight of the possible danger my body reacted instantly. Air hissed up my throat, spitting through my clenched teeth with a low, menacing sound like a swarm of bees. Before the sound was out, my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown. I flipped off the ground in a spin, momentarily preoccupied with the way my body moved. The instant I'd considered standing erect, I was already straight. There was no brief fragment of time in which the action occurred; the change was instantaneous, almost as if there was no movement at all.

So by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively - about a sixteenth of a second later - I already understood what had startled me, and that I had overreacted.

In front of me stood an old, dusty mirror. And inside it, staring right back at me with eyes wide, was a stranger.

Her skin was pale and fair, not the slightest imperfection on its smooth like milk surface. Her hair, red and fiery, were falling freely on her shoulders, leaves and dirt caught up in them, giving her a wild look. She was dressed in what once would have probably been quite a lovely blue dress, only now it was all shred to pieces and covered entirely with dirt and dried blood.

At the sight of it – at the  _smell_  of it- the dry ache in my throat was suddenly all I could think about, and the more I thought about it, the more it hurt. My hand flew up to cup my throat like I could smother the flames from the outside. The skin of my neck was strange beneath my fingers. So smooth it was somehow soft, though it was hard as stone, too. I was almost startled when the woman in the mirror copied my motion instantly, and I could but stare at her wide-eyed. And as she stared right back at me I could only be shocked at the sight of her glowing crimson eyes blazing like vicious red flames.

This was me? I certainly didn't recognize the perfect, symmetrical characteristics of the woman's face or her impossibly gorgeous body. The stranger in front of me held a dizzying beauty, one that had everyone stopping in their tracks to gawk at open-mouthed. I had no memories of myself being this beautiful. But then again, I had no memories of myself  _at all_ , so whatever. At least I was pretty.

I felt a smile making its way to my lips and my reflection smiled back at me, two perfect little dimples appearing at her cheeks.

I could get used to this.

Satisfied with my outlook, I decided to head outside and head towards the freeway in search for any signs of civilization. I walked up to the door and softly twisted the handle, only to discover that the door was, in fact, locked. Letting out a frustrated sigh, I stubbornly repeated the action putting just a tiny bit more force into it, as if that would magically solve the problem.

And then, a loud crashing sound later, I found myself staring wide-eyed at the broken handle in my hand.

_What the hell…_

My eyes darted from the handle to the little hole that was now in its original place on the door.

Had I just broken the handle? With my own  _hands_?

I let the small piece of metal fall from my grip, focusing on the door itself. I reached to grab the wood through the hole and then, softly, I pulled as if to peel a piece of wood. And peel the wood I did.

A surprised chuckle escaped my lips, adrenaline rushing through my veins. Fascinated by the undeniable proof that I was stronger than I had ever believed I could be, I placed my hand, fingers spread wide, against the wall next to me. Then I dug my fingers slowly into the wall, crushing rather than digging; the consistency reminded me of hard cheese. I ended up with a handful of gravel.

With a grin stretching my face, I whirled in a sudden circle and karate-chopped the wall with the side of my hand. The entire cabin shrieked and groaned and - with a big poof of dust - split in two. I let out a little shriek and run outside as fast as I could, and in the split of a second, I found myself about 20 meters from the cabin, staring at it collapsing into fragments before me with awe.

I started giggling in exhilaration, but that abruptly stopped when the act threw fluid to the flames in my throat.

Realization hit me hard, then.

I was not  _human_.

I swallowed hard, a single question ringing in my ears.

If I wasn't human… then  _what_  was I?

And as if to respond, a flash of light suddenly appeared in front of me, so bright that my entire vision went white. Startled, I took a few steps back until my back hit against a tree, almost bending it over.

And then I wasn't in the woods anymore.

I was sitting at a table at the local diner, a beautiful, dark-skinned stranger in the seat ahead of me.

Only I wasn't really sitting there. I was only  _watching_  myself sit there as if I was a third person inside the room.

My  _future_  self, as my sense told me, smiled up to the man in front of me. A man whose eyes were red as well, just a shade darker than mine. A man who was the same thing I was.

A man who was unbelievably, extraordinarily beautiful.

"I'm April, by the way," I told him. "April Kepner."

He was looking at me quizzing as if he was trying to figure me out. "Jackson Avery." He replied.

My smile got even wider. "I know."

And then the scene in front of me changed again with a flash of light.

I was out the rain, the water sprinkling – warm and wet on my skin. Wet raindrops trickled down my body, dripping from my eyelashes.

"Why are you out in the rain?" came a voice, and I traced it all the way to the house across the street. A man, the same man that had been in the diner, closed the door behind him and came towards me at an inhuman speed, a large suitcase in his one arm.

"I like the rain," I answered nonchalantly. "Plus, it's not like I'm going to catch a cold or anything."

He rolled his eyes as he reached me, and instantly wrapped his free arm around my waist. "I'm sorry I had you waiting, baby." He murmured now, so softly that only I could hear.

I cocked my head. "I already told you. For you, I'd wait forever."

He flashed me a crooked grin before leaning down and caressing my lips with his own.

Another flash of light and I was now jumping off a tree, right on the back of an alarmingly enormous grizzly bear.

I watched in terror as I launched myself at it, knocking us both to the forest floor. Its raking claws could have been caressing fingers for all the impact they had on my skin. Its teeth could find no purchase against my shoulder or my throat. Its weight was nothing. My teeth unerringly sought its throat, and its instinctive resistance was pitifully feeble against my strength. My jaws locked easily over the precise point where the heat flow concentrated.

It was effortless as biting into butter. My teeth were steel razors; they cut through the fur and fat and sinews like they weren't there. The flavor was wrong, but the blood was hot and wet and it soothed the ragged, itching thirst as I drank in an eager rush. The bear's struggles grew more and more feeble, and its screams choked off with a gurgle. The warmth of the blood radiated throughout my whole body, heating even my fingertips and toes.

The bear was finished before I was. The thirst flared again when it ran dry, and I watched myself shoving its carcass off my body in disgust. How could I still be thirsty after all that?

I wrenched myself erect in one quick move. Standing, I realized I was a bit of a mess. I wiped my face off on the back of my arm and tried to fix the dress. The claws that had been so ineffectual against my skin had had more success with the thin satin.

"Hmm," that Jackson guy said. I looked up to see him leaning casually against a tree trunk, watching me with a thoughtful look on his face.

"I guess I could have done that better." I was covered in dirt, my hair knotted, my dress bloodstained and hanging in tatters, revealing rather large parts of skin ranging all around my body. "It's just that I usually hunt deer so I'm not used to the fighting part."

"You did perfectly fine," he assured me. "It's just that... it was much more difficult for me to watch than it should have been."

I raised my eyebrows, confused.

"It's quite hard for a man to let the love of his life wrestle with bears," he explained, "especially with you being so damn tiny. I was having an anxiety attack the whole time."

I giggled. "Silly."

"I know. I like the improvements to your dress, though." He said, walking up to me with that cocky smirk of his. "And I have a feeling I know how to make it even better."

The woods were overflowed with light and I was now in a disk store.

My eyes were scanning the covers of the disks in front of me, my hand following my gaze, softly touching the name tags. SAM NEELEY, WILLIE NELSON, LOUIS NEWTON…

A hand came to hold mine, stopping my movements. "Can't you just sing for me instead?" he whispered in my ear, his breath brushing against my cheek, sending whispers of electricity through my skin.

"Jackson, no. Technology is evolving and so are we. We're doing this, end of story."

He let out a sigh. "So stubborn." He mumbled.

"You're all about spending money on anything useless like the latest brand of car or  _this_ " I grumbled, gesturing to the enormous wedding ring that was on my finger "and yet buying a simple vinyl player is suddenly too much?" I challenged him, one eyebrow raised.

He huffed in disbelief, and before I knew it he walked up to the cashier and asked: "How much for the entire shop?"

"Jackson!" I hissed, running to his side.

He turned to me, a large grin on his lips. "Don't you ever dare call me cheap again."

"I thought we were going to buy a new house with the lottery money." I protested.

"That money can buy a hundred houses, baby. And besides, once we spend it we can always win another one." He winked at me. "The perks of being married to a psychic."

And then with another flash of light, I was in a dark room laid on the floor next to the fireplace, blackets wrapped around my naked body as it was tangled with Jackson's.

I sighed against his marble chest. "How do we ever stop?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, his fingers lightly tracing from the back of my neck all the way down to my waist. My eyes rolled back into my head a little.

"We're never going to get tired. We don't have to catch our breath or sleep or eat or even use the bathroom. You have the most beautiful, perfect body in the world and I have you all to myself, and it just doesn't feel like I am ever going to find a point where I will think, 'Now I've had enough for one day'. I am always going to want more. And the day is never going to end. So, in such a situation, how do we ever stop?"

His hand made its way up to my jaw, tilting my head upwards so that I was looking up at him. "Would it be too bad if we never did?" he asked, his breath hitting my face.

I licked my lips. "Fine with me."

The scene in front of me turned white once more, and I now finally found myself back into the woods, staring at the demolished cabin.

I let out a sigh of relief, my hand flying to my once again aching throat, as the thirst was back. I was in my body again. Or maybe I had never left in the first place. I could never be sure.

Instinctively scanning my surroundings for signs of any threat, I was suddenly certain of three things.

First, I was a vampire. There was no other way to explain the thirst or the blood drinking.

Second, I just had a vision of the future. Of _my_  future.

And third, I had to find Jackson Avery as soon as possible.

And without knowing where I was or where I was heading, I started running with the speed of light, disappearing into the trees.

_1948 - Seattle, Washington_

I was sitting at the diner's counter, my thoughts a complete mess. My hand was drawing random shapes on the napkin set in front of me, my mind in such a hyper state that I could hardly concentrate on the act.

 _Any moment now_ , I thought to myself but the seconds didn't seem to pass fast enough.

"More coffee, hun?"

I glanced up at the waitress and returned the smile she was giving me, even though I felt too anxious for it to be anything near genuine. "No, thank you," I told her kindly, wondering how could she not have noticed that I hadn't taken a single sip of my coffee the entire time I had been sitting right in front of her.

Yet again, humans never really noticed stuff much. I spent the entirety of my days around humans. I worked with humans, I interacted with humans, I even had a few close relationships with humans that could maybe resemble friendships. And yet, nobody in the twenty-eight years of my life –or existence, whatever you want to call it- as a vampire pointed out how, for example, I hadn't aged one single day or how my skin was hard as rock or how my eyes went from golden to black and back to golden every few weeks.

The latter had been a great surprise for me as well. See, when I had first woken up all transformed –and just like every other new vampire, as I later came to learn- my eyes had had a bright red color and only switched to black when I was thirsty and needed to hunt. Most vampires' eye color didn't abstain much from that later on their lives, apart from the red darkening a little as years passed. And yet my eyes… my eyes were now the color of topaz shimmering in the sunlight. And I had discovered that that was caused by feeding only on animals and never on humans. I hadn't met a lot of vampires in my lifetime, but of those I had come across from time to time, not one had even thought an animal diet was even possible, and they definitely hadn't been willing to try it.

And why was I, you might ask? Why would a vampire - a creature whose looks, scent and voice were perfectly designed to attract human prey and whose strength, speed and intelligence made them the world's greatest predator - choose to not drink human blood as it so craves and instead follow a diet that to humans would feel like living with only tofu?

Well, the answer was quite simple. I didn't want to be a  _monster_.

I thought that just because life threw you some cards, it didn't mean that you couldn't take matters into your own hands and make the best out of the situation you were put in. And even though I never eventually remembered being one or what had happened to me, killing humans just felt wrong.

"Pie?" the waitress' voice pulled me out of my thoughts then, bringing me back to the present.

I shook my head. "I'm alright, thanks." I replied, suddenly fascinated by the fact that the lady in front of me had surprisingly not one, but two heartbeats. A quick flash of light and I was in a hospital room, a young lady I recognized as the waitress was laid on a bed, glowing with joy as she was looking down at a tiny wrinkled newborn in her arms. And then, as soon as it had appeared, the scene before me was gone.

I blinked and smiled up at the woman. Of course, only half a second had passed for all she knew. That's what always happened. "You're going to have a beautiful baby," I told her.

She bit her lips. "Is it that obvious?"

I shook my head. "No, no. You just… have that glow."

"You're sweet. Thank you," she said with a grin and walked away to the other side of the counter.

I glanced at the clock again and let out a sigh.  _Almost there…_

My gaze fell down to the smudges on the napkin in my hands. I almost rolled my eyes when I finally realized what I had drawn and immediately put the little piece of paper in my pocket.

And that's when it finally happened.

I heard the diner's door jingle open behind me letting in a wisp of cold, autumn air. A non-detectable by human noses, delicious scent of wildflowers mixed up with ocean breeze filled the air at once. A scent I knew all too well without ever having smelled it.  _His_  scent.

I smirked.

I could barely contain myself and turn around towards the sound in human speed. And when I did, I froze. Even if my heart had still been beating, it would have momentarily stopped.

Because there he was.

_Jackson._

The second I laid my eyes on him I realized my visions didn't do him any justice at all. He was tall and slender, but strong build at the same time. He had smooth flawless dark skin and short shaved dark hair, a strong face with his features molded from granite and full, sultry lips. A short, thin beard was covering his strong jaw, above of which stood prominent cheekbones, a well-defined chin and nose and dark eyebrows that were framing his deep red eyes.

I thanked God I didn't need oxygen anymore because my every breath instantly hitched in my throat.

This was it. This was my chance. And I couldn't mess things up now, not after all these years I had been preparing myself. I hopped off the stool and with small, airy steps I walked over to his table.

He didn't notice me at first. I held still, standing right next to his seat for a moment before I decided to draw his attention myself.

"You've kept me waiting a long time." I told him, loud and clear.

Jackson looked up at me, his eyes staring into mine for a moment too long before he ducked his head. "I'm sorry ma'am. I didn't know I had someplace to be."

I bit back a smile at the sound of his musical voice, so familiar and yet so new at the same time.

"You're… you're like me." He noted after a second.

"That's quite an assumption for someone I just met." I teased him. I knew the only reason why he was not entirely sure of my nature was the color of my eyes.

He didn't smile. "You're a…" he trailed off, looking around at the diner's tables, all full of humans.

"Oh." I gulped. "Well, yeah. I am  _that_."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

I shook my head. "No. Just from my mind." I blurted out, unthinking. My eyes widened. "That… that sounded crazy, I'm sorry. What an intro." I patched it up. Then, too softly for human ears, I mumbled to myself "Way to go, dumbass."

But the thing was, his ears weren't human.

If I could blush I'd be the color of red crimson by now. I cleared my throat. "Anyone siting there?" I asked, pointing towards the seat across from him. I knew the seat was empty, of course, but I figured I should ask. After all, who wouldn't want to sit across him and stare at his angelic beauty for as long as he let them? "It's the best view in the diner."

He gave me a puzzled look.

I blinked.

_Crap. Fix this!_

A flash of light and I was watching myself standing in front of Jackson from afar, a lightning striking right outside. Another flash and I was back.

"Because I want to see the lightning strike!" I blurted out quickly. "And that right there is a front row seat."

Before I even got to finish my sentence, lightning flashed outside lighting up the sky. The diner stirred a little bit.

Jackson glanced outside and then right back at me, looking rather shocked. "You can make lightning?"

I grimaced. It was common knowledge that some vampires owned some sort of 'powers' or a 'gift' as I liked to call them. Those could vary from my visions to something simple like, maybe, compassion or an empathic ability. But most vampires didn't have any gifts at all, of course. And Jackson was one of them.

Not that he needed any to be absolutely perfect.

"Not my kind of gift," I replied eventually. "But if you already think I'm that powerful, then I'd say we're off to a good start."

He grinned at me, intrigued, and my silent heart almost started beating again at the view.

I sat down across from him. "I went ahead and made the assumption that this seat was empty," I exclaimed. "I'm April, by the way," I told him with a smile. "April Kepner."

He was looking at me quizzing as if he was trying to figure me out. "Jackson Avery." He replied.

My smile got even wider. "I know."

He quirked one eyebrow. "How?"

"Oh, I'm really good at names. Like, our waitress here," I said, just as the waitress came walking towards us, carrying a cup of coffee, "is Betty."

Betty set my coffee down in front of me. "You don't like coffee much, do you? You left it on the counter."

"Thank you," I replied louder for her to hear, and she gave me a little grin before walking away again. I looked back at Jackson, who was now staring at my cup. "It makes me feel human," I answered his unspoken question.

"She was wearing a name tag." He noted instead.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, well, I'm also very good at reading so…"

He chuckled, the soft sound ringing in my ears like bells. "So, what brings you to Seattle?"

The answer came fast. "I'm getting to know you."

He smirked. "Yeah, well, I  _know_  that. I mean-"

"I know what you mean." I cut him off. "Same answer. But I should ask you the same thing, Jackson, what brings you to Seattle?"

At the question, he instantly looked away. A moment of silence passed before he spoke again. "I'm not sure. I've been a little… lost lately."

Sensing his unease, I looked down at my hands on the table. "Well… I'm glad you found yourself here." I mumbled truthfully. "I mean, I'm glad you're here, whether or not you found yourself yet." I rephrased.

Yet another moment of silence passed, and with a sigh, I took hold of the menu next to the condiments. Then, it turned white before me and I watched as the waitress came towards the table where Jackson and myself were sitting, holding a sad looking strawberry shake.

Back to the present, Jackson was still sitting quietly ahead of me. "The descriptions!" I spit out to break the silence, maybe a bit overenthusiastically.

He gave me a look. "What about them?"

"I like the menu descriptions. That's sort of why I come to restaurants. Every restaurant has its own sort of style, like-", I scanned the menu, easily finding the shake I was looking for, and read aloud, " _How about a nice strawberry shake, the old-fashioned way? We take our cream straight from the farm to craft Finch's famous vanilla ice cream and blend it with handpicked strawberries. Even though we'll give you two straws, it's so good you won't want to share_."

Jackson seemed amused. "Let me see that." He muttered, holding out his hand.

"Very homegrown, that one," I commented as I was passing him the menu. "Like a friend wrote it."

Just as he took a good look at the picture of the strawberry shake, Betty passed right by us and he glanced towards her nonchalantly.

I did not need to look to know what she was holding.

"Hey, is that…"

"Think so."

He stared at the menu incredulously. "Huh. Not what I would have pictured."

Through the corner of my eyes, I saw Betty tripping then, and I instinctively jumped up from my seat to catch her. As soon as I helped her to her feet I noticed the poor woman looked as pale as a ghost. Ha! No, she looked as pale as me!

"Almost dropped it again." She muttered, breathless. "These floors must think I'm angry with them."

I giggled. "Oh, don't worry. It happens to the best of us."

Oh, the irony. With my perfect balance and impossibly fast reflexes, I would have to be staging it for me to ever trip.

Still, as I sat back down in my seat and my eyes locked with Jackson's, I couldn't help but add, "I recently fell myself."

Jackson huffed, shaking his head in disbelief. " _How_  did you do that?"

I raised my eyebrows innocently. "Do what?"

"First the lightning. Now, this."

I bit down on my lower lip. "Okay, so I'm a little bit intuitive."

That seemed to raise his interest. He leaned in playfully, his face inches from mine. "Only a little?"

I felt my mouth fill with venom, a hunger much different than the one for blood conjuring my senses. I shrugged, attempting to seem indifferent. "It's just something I'm naturally good at. I could probably make a killing at palm readings." I joked, chuckling softly.

I saw him raise an eyebrow before I heard the sound of a coin hitting against the table. "Let's see." He challenged and offered me his hand.

I tried to hide a little smirk as I took hold of his hand, turned it around, closed my eyes and began tracing my fingers along his palm. His skin was so soft, so smooth that it felt as if I was touching feathers. The lust hit me hard then, but I was not going to make any moves just yet. Instead, I held myself back and settled to simply feeling his skin against mine.

"What do you see?" came his curious voice eventually, and I sighed. It seemed like this was all I was going to get for now.

"You…" I mumbled, reopening my eyes. "…have very nice hands."

He threw his head back and laughed, and at that moment he looked so lighthearted and carefree that I simply stood there, gawking at him like a drooling puppy.

When his laughing stopped he stared down at the table, and as I followed his gaze I realized that we were still holding hands. I was about to pull away, embarrassed, but then I felt his thumb brushing against my skin, so softly I first thought I was imagining it. His touch sent whispers of electricity through my skin, and I took an unnecessary breath to settle myself in response.

"I've got to tell you…" he murmured, his gaze fixed on our united hands. "I'm feeling an emotion that I haven't experienced in a long time."

My silent heart flattered, my mind trying to push back the thought that it might be anything close to what I was feeling. "What?" I asked with a little voice.

"Hope."

And there was something about the way he said it, that even though it was not exactly what I had hoped for, I still felt warmth crawl up my chest, spreading to my entire body. Looking right into his eyes, I gave him a small, genuine smile.

And then the waitress came up again, and instantly he pulled his hand off mine, leaving my skin feeling suddenly cold and naked. Empty.

"Sure I can't bring you kids any food?"

I sighed, and took my eyes off his to look up at her. "No, thank you."

But only when I looked back at Jackson did I notice he was looking at Betty walk away like a child looks at its lollipop. "There's food everywhere." He mumbled, too softly for human ears to hear.

Ugh.  _Lovely._

"Yeah, well, I'm a vegetarian." I cleared my throat. "So there's, you know, not a lot here for me. In the diner."

He stared at me like I had just told him I had a pet dragon. "A… vegetarian?"

"We only eat animals," I explained, pointing towards my eyes. "Thus, the eyes."

His eyes narrowed. "We?"

I realized my slip a second too late, while in the meantime staring at him like an idiot. How was I supposed to explain that the 'we' in my sentence was referring to the two of us _? Get a grip, girl_ , I thought to myself and cleared my throat. "My family and I. Well, future family."  _Family_  was a far more general term than  _husband_ , and the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was engaged or something of that sort.

"You're more than a little intuitive." His eyebrows were raised, his expression impressed.

I shrugged. "Well, I don't see the future or anything, just… glimpses and possibilities."

"Is that what I am? A possibility?"

"No." I smiled at him. "No, I decided on you a long time ago."

His eyes bore into mine with such an intensity I had to look away and take a few breaths to calm myself. How could he just dazzle me like that? I shook my head at myself.

When I looked back at him he was smirking. "So." He tucked his head to the side. "What happens next, April?"

I pursed my lips. "I think that's up to you."

And then everything happened too fast.

A crashing sound came from close behind me, somewhere by the door that led to the diner's kitchen. Plates shattered into a million pieces when they slammed on the floor, as Betty lost her balance, slipped and fell on the ground hands-first. Sharp pieces of porcelain penetrated her skin as her hands found the floor, blood overflowing the cuts almost immediately.

I was all too familiar with it, this scent that ruled completely. I felt the thirst-driven haze begin, a haze in which I was aware only of the thirst and the smell that promised to quench it. The thirst got worse, so painful now that it confused all my other thoughts and began to remind me of the burn of venom in my veins, a lifetime ago. The new fragrance was so attractive that there wasn't a choice into doing anything in my power to resist it. It was compulsory.

And yet, somehow, I had learned how to fight it. After almost three decades of practicing, I could now control myself, control the thirst.

But Jackson couldn't.

And so I watched in terror as he started to get up out of the booth, his eyes instantly turning a shade darker. Hungrier.

"Jackson?"

In a split second, he was on his feet, walking towards the poor woman in determination.

"Jackson, no! Stop!" I shrieked, recklessly grabbing his arm to hold him back.

There was only one thing that had any chance of penetrating his focus now, an instinct more powerful, more basic than the need to quench the fire - it was the instinct to protect himself from danger. Self-preservation.

And I had thoughtlessly just become the threat.

A bubble of sound built in his chest, his lips pulled back of their own accord to expose his teeth in warning. He shot me a glare so vicious that I felt myself shrink involuntarily, his arm violently pulling away from mine as the rising sound ripped its way up his throat and out in the form of a feral snarl.

"Please don't…" came out a pained whisper, but it was to no avail.

Jackson turned around and fled, aiming right at the woman's throat.

The scene before me was suddenly overflowed with a flash of light, and I found myself back at our table, Jackson sitting right in front of me, with a smirk on his face.

Relief washed over me like a wave, and I let out a long, shaky breath.

"So." He said, tucking his head to the side. "What happens next, April?"

I huffed, suddenly irritated by his to-be attitude. The thoughtless moron he was, he had almost killed a pregnant woman and her baby! I felt the blood rise to my face as anger settled in me. "Well, we both become vegetarian, for one!" I replied angrily, and without giving him a chance to respond I leaned over the table, grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down, crushing my lips on his own with force.

I felt him suck in a surprised breath, his body going completely rigid before he finally relaxed against me. His one hand came to cup my face and his lips started moving against mine, creating the most incredible feeling I had ever experienced.

A tiny part of my mind became aware of the sound of a plate crashing somewhere in the background but I didn't even care to acknowledge it. I was too preoccupied with the intoxicating freshness of his breath as it mingled with mine, the tingles his eyelashes gave me as they brushed against my cheeks, the impossible softness of his movements despite his marble skin. To my account, he didn't seem to even notice the crashing either.

Only when I heard the waitress run back inside the kitchen did I allow our lips to break apart, and even then they remained only an inch from each other's as our eyes locked. We were both breathless, yet not from the actual need for air. This was so much more than that.

I blinked furiously, my forehead resting against his own. "Was that  _hope_ too?" I teased him, panting.

He licked his lips, looking into my eyes in awe. "No, that…" he smiled. "That was something else."

Unfortunately, I had to completely ignore the wave of emotion that overcame me then, as I heard Betty's harried steps coming from the kitchen. I straightened my body and urgently whispered, "We have to get out of here."

He nodded. "Yeah, let's go."

I took a second to thank heavens I had already paid for my coffee as we stormed outside the diner's door at a speed that could barely be considered human. However, I was sure that if any of the customers had known the reason behind our rush, they wouldn't have minded it in the least.

Once outside, with the door shutting closed behind us, I finally allowed myself a sigh of relief. My every breath got caught in my throat, however, when I felt his arm wrap around my waist, holding me close. I turned around to face him, only to be flashed with a radiant, brilliant smile.

"So…" he trailed off, his fingers tracing the line of my spine up and down, sending delicious shivers down my body. "Where do we go from here?"

I struggled with finding my voice. "Um… it's going to start raining in twenty-three minutes, so since I know you hate the rain we could find something to do until then and after that-" My sentence was cut in half when he gave me a quick peck on the nose.

He chuckled. "That is certainly going to take some time to get used to. But I was actually talking about the next thousand years or so." He said with a smirk.

I blinked at him.

Man, he just got super serious, like, really fast. "Wow, uh… Okay, how about we start off with a walk?"

He licked his grinning lips. "I would like that very much." He mumbled.

But as he spoke, his words got all the more blurry, his face all the more white, until my sight was completely overflowed with light.

When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer with him outside the diner. I was alone, sitting on that counter, looking at the napkin with a small drawing that was in my hands. It pictured a couple, Jackson and myself, leaning over the little table by the diner's window and kissing. I had to hold myself from rolling my eyes as I snatched the little piece of paper in my pocket.

And then, the diner's door jingled open behind me, a delicious scent of wildflowers and ocean breeze filling the air.

I smirked.


	8. Japril with Benefits by MelMel1234

**Japril with Benefits**

"That is it! I'm giving up on men. I'm going to live my life alone and miserable. I'm going to buy a cat and just embrace my life as a cat lady."

April grunted, as she slammed the door behind her, yanking at a heel that'd been crushing her little toe all night. None of these dates were worth the effort she put into them.

"Nope, I hate cats. They have fur-balls, they litter everywhere and they're ungrateful for you putting up with them."

Jackson, her best friend, and roommate, a situation that came into being after April's fancy job agency made her recruit him to work as an art director for GQ, chimed in from his position on the couch.

"Fine. I'll get a dog then." April replies, sitting down on the couch, and throwing her other heel across the room.

"That's negotiable, yes." Jackson grins, still staring at the TV screen. "So, on a scale of James the dentist who ordered everything on the menu and asked you to pay for it and Richard the gentleman who is 40 years too old, how bad was it?"

"It was George the lawyer who sent his food back 3 times, and yelled at our waiter for expecting a tip," April said, stretching her feet across Jackson's lap.

"What a dick."

"I didn't even last the whole date. I told him I had to pee and ran for it."

Jackson laughed, popping a fry into his mouth. She reached forward and grabbed a fry, before he swatted her hand away.

"Oldest trick in the book. You need to update your game for next time."

She rolled her eyes. "There will be no next time. I told you. This is it. I meant that."

"Yeah, but you say that every time you have a shitty date. You do this whole single and happy, self love and celibacy thing, until you get horny looking at pictures of Justin Timberlake. Then, it's back to Tinder you go."

"I do not go on Tinder to get laid!" She punched his right shoulder, and watched him grin back at her. "I'm not you."

"Oh, low blow. You've bruised my ego too much. How will I ever heal?" he mocks, turning his attention back to the game.

"Whatever. I'm looking for a relationship, someone I can be serious with. I want to settle down, you know that."

"Yeah yeah, you want Mr. Perfect, so you can have your 3 babies, and a high mortgage house in a good neighbourhood. I know. You only tell me, what, 3 times a day?" He smirks, pinching the skin on her leg. She jolts, and hits him with her foot, which he catches around the ankle, and pulls down on to his lap.

"Mock me all you want, but-"

He sighs, turning off the tv, and facing her. "I'm not mocking you, April. I'm just saying that you don't have to act like you're going to have cobwebs in your womb anytime soon. You're a modern woman, or whatever you call yourself on your eat, pray, love days. You have an amazing job, you make good money, you have an awesome apartment that you share with the best friend any person could ever have."

She rolls her eyes at his smug grin, but nods at his words. He's making sense, as much as it infuriates her.

"You're super smart, funny and insanely hot," he says, and she blushes at his words, no matter how platonic they may be. "Just have some fun. You don't do that enough. Go out, get drunk, party too hard. Forget about relationships for now. You can settle down once you're done having fun."

She looks at him for some time, and nods her head, smiling up at him. "You want to settle down?"

"Yeah… eventually."

She raises a brow, looking at him skeptically.

"What? I do!" he insists. "When I meet the right girl, I wouldn't mind settling down. Passing my genes on to some very fortunate soul."

"You're so full of it!" she laughs.

He laughs along with her, and smiles at her when the laughter dies down. "Sometimes, it's fine if it's just sex. It doesn't have to get complicated. It can just be fun."

She frowns. "Well, I don't want to sleep with just anyone."

"You haven't had sex since you lost your virginity to Alex almost 2 yea-"

She clamps a hand in front of his mouth. "We are never talking about that. Ever."

"Fine."

"Anyway," April says, pushing her hair behind her shoulders, "having sex with someone exclusively is being in a relationship."

"No it's not. Having  _emotional_  sex with someone exclusively is being in a relationship. Otherwise you're just sex buddies."

"Ew, that sounds gross."

"Fine, call it whatever makes it seem agreeable to you. Screw partners, lay mates, fu-"

"Friends with benefits." She chimes in, before his list gets progressively grosser.

"Okay, yeah that."

"Well, where am I going to find someone who'll want to-"

"Well, you're looking at one."

Jackson said, pointing at himself. April grumbled annoyed by his inability to be serious even when she really needed him to be.

"Jackson, I'm being serious."

"Yeah, well so am I."

April's eyes bulged out, and she stared back at Jackson, mouth agape. He wasn't really suggesting that they become friends with benefits was he?

"You? Have sex causally with... you?"

"Yeah, why not?" He shrugged his shoulders, sounding as if he'd just suggested they grab Chinese for tomorrow night's dinner.

"Why not? Well how about I give you 50 million reasons why not. That's a horrible idea." She turned towards him, crossing her feet underneath her. He was being insane. Ridiculous, and insane. As if she would ever consider sleeping with Jackson of all people.

She most definitely hasn't considered this. Ever. At all. Not even once. Not even that time when she'd walked in on him in the shower. Definitely not.

"Um no it isn't. We're best friends, and we're attracted to each other. That's basically the two requirements."

"I'm not attracted to-"

"You made out with me last year during our Christmas party."

She gasped. How dare he bring this up. She'd almost hoped he'd forgotten about it. Mostly because she'd really liked what was happening, and was thinking about how she'd really like not to have to stop. But of course, it was Jackson. And she wanted a serious relationship. Those two things were not correlative.

"I was drunk!"

"You were slightly tipsy, and very,  _very_  engaged in what we were doing. Don't even try to deny it."

"Jackson! That is so beyond the point. The point is-" she stammered.

"That we would have great, platonic sex together."

He was… infuriating, and so insistent that it was strangely, seriously hot. She needed help.

"Shut up. How do you know it'll remain platonic?" she asked, gazing at him with a stubborn, challenging expression.

He smirked back at her, "Why, do you plan on falling in love with me?"

"No!" she coughs, trying her hardest to reduce the blush creeping up on her face.

"Okay then. We have no problem."

"You might fall in love with me," she said, smirking back at him.

"I think I'll be fine, April. I've never been in love before, and you're my favorite girl."

She smiled at that. He was sweet, and lovely. When he wasn't being a douche. He was her best friend. If she trusted anyone with this ridiculous arrangement, it was him. It also didn't hurt that he was so… delicious.

"So?"

She considered him for a second. This could work. She needed to let out her frustrations, and he made a good point. She needed to loosen up. She was too young not to. And it wasn't as if there was anyone she wanted to date, anyway.

"How do we even do this?"

He grinned, clearly happy with the turn of events.

"Well, we don't date other people during this. If we're sleeping together, it's exclusive at least to that extent. Everything else, you just... let it happen."

His voice dropped an octave, and she realised he was flirting with her. This could be a disaster. If she was honest with herself, it would only take her one second of opening herself up to him to fall in love with him.

This could be a disaster.

But then again, he wasn't going to fall for her. Ever. That would not happen. So as long as she kept reminding herself that, she'd be fine.

"April?"

He brought a hand towards her face, his thumb rubbing her skin softly. His breath ghosted over her lips, and she could feel her heart beating faster and faster, the closer he got. He was intoxicating, and she was halfway there.

"Ready to have fun?"

He put his lips over hers, and she felt him pronounce each syllable.

No feelings. No strings. None.

"Are you?"

Fun was nice.

For now.


	9. Serving Avery by Japril12

**Serving Avery**

Jackson fussed with the collar of his crisp, white dress shirt for what he would have guessed was at least the millionth time this evening. He wasn't struggling for oxygen at all, the bowtie was more annoying than life-threatening. The constant fixing of his tuxedo was a habit he'd developed over the years from attending these events. But no amount of adjusting would make him feel any less uncomfortable.

There were too many snobs in the room.

The Harper Avery Foundation gala or banquet or kiss-ass-fest occurred once every year in the middle of summer. At his mother's request his attendance was a necessity and since Catherine Avery's requests were more like demands, and after ditching the event the last few years, he promised he would be there.

This would be his final summer before he went off to medical school. Instead of spending the beginning of his summer vacation languishing, he was stuck in Boston for another week helping her organise, and plan and listen to the familiar board members that he used to doodle caricatures of in legal pads when he was fifteen, drone on and on.

Tonight, was all about excellence and recognition. His grandfather wanted all those here to be so very inspired and to pass on the surgical torch, eventually seeing the world into a brighter tomorrow. The speeches sounded so cool when Jackson heard it all those years ago, as he sat at the dining room table. However, presently being stuck at table #3 with the much younger people here tonight, he felt like his mother had him seated at a glorified kids table. He remembered his mother telling him that he needed to brush up his networking skills.

"Where are you spending your summer?"

"I'm sorry," Jackson scratched his chin and gave her a weak smile. He couldn't remember what she was talking about and honestly, he didn't give a damn what Tabitha Winslow's vacation plans were but if his mother found out he had dozed off while talking to an investor's daughter she wouldn't be too happy with him. "You were saying."

"I was asking if you had any concrete summer plans because I…"

He'd grown up around most of these kids, they went to the same boarding schools and existed in the same social circles. Jackson swore he'd had this conversation a hundred times over and it wasn't even interesting the first time he'd had it. The same old story.

There had to someone in this room who was having a worse time than him.

"Reed! What are you doing?" April whispered harshly as she ran towards her friend and fellow waitress of the night. She removed the only uneaten pastry Reed still had in her hands and set it down on the food trolley with the rest. "If Burke catches you, we're both dead."

"Hrrmph," Reed's word came through muffled since she was still chewing. She hadn't seen April for most of the night since they were so busy serving the guests at tonight's function.

"But I'm so hungry, April. " Reed argued and hopped up onto the trolley to take a rest, settling another tray on her lap. She pointed over April's head to the double doors that lead out into one of the banquet halls of the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. "And anyways it's not like the rich folks are gonna cry a river if I take a few…" Reed circles her hand over the platter of assorted hors-d'oeuvres and tilts her head in question. "What are these called again?"

April rolled her eyes and grabbed her platter out from Reed's lap much to her friend's disappointment. This area between the hall and the kitchen doesn't offer up much privacy, with the doors opening every few seconds for the servers to come through, so they can't make much noise. If that wasn't the case April wouldn't be above pummeling Reed right now. She really needed this job and her friend's antics could land them both in hot water.

April wiped her hands on her short, black apron and lifted the tray higher with her right hand just as another server glided past her on the way to the kitchen. "These are Gougères which in English means some kind of pastry dough thing mixed with cheese. AKA, not for you."

The guests had finished the three-course meal but the party was still going on and remarkably they were still hungry so April was still on the clock for a lengthy cocktail hour.

"Okay, okay damn no need to be so bossy," Reed pouted.

"Sorry," April breathed and rolled her shoulders, lowering the platter and holding it with two hands. "That was mean."

"Forget it," Reed sighed and leaned back on her palms. "I shouldn't be eating on the job but you should relax. I thought you were glad that this was the gig tonight."

April chuckled, shaking her head. "Because I'm yelling at you in hushed tones?"

"No," Reed kicked one leg out, hitting April on the thigh. April scowled but let Reed continue talking. "Aren't you going to med school in the fall? This Avery woman is supposed to be some kind of hotshot surgeon right?"

"It's Catherine Avery and she's not a hotshot. She's… she is amazing," April sing-songed while she arranged the food items correctly back onto the platter. Burke was a stickler for detail and she didn't want herself or Reed to get into any trouble. "This benefit tonight is to raise money for the worldwide health initiative that Dr Avery founded when she started-"

"Whoa, are you sure your invitation didn't get lost in the mail?" Reed teased causing April to laugh quietly.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that Miss Adamson!" Burke interrupted loudly startling the pair. He adjusted his black-wire framed glasses after giving his staff a stern look. "For Miss Kepner to be invited to an event like this she'd have to be on a higher pay grade."

Preston Burke was the owner of the most popular and sought-after catering company in the city. He had worked tirelessly to build a good name for himself over the years and didn't have time for incompetence, particularly on a night like this. Especially, on a night like this.

He glared at the two girls again and that was enough for them to get the message. Reed hopped off the trolley and took a different serving platter, quickly following behind a spooked April out into the hall.

"His eyes almost popped out of his head." Reed giggled into April's ear as they went their separate ways to serve.

The hour seemed to be endless but April didn't mind all that much. The work was simple, easy and she was standing in the presence of some of the most influential people in the medical world. Even if she was just serving them things that the chef cooked up. On the outside looking in, wandering in the opulent surroundings did make her realise one thing: she didn't fit here. The waitress uniform was the more obvious reminder - white dress shirt, black skirt and a red tie - the other was the people.

"I'm just saying a free health care system would work in a utopian civilisation but ultimately it would collapse on itself…"

April snorted under her breath at the comment and went to turn around to serve another guest.

"Miss?"

April looked back since that was what she had been referred to as the whole night. She plastered a gentle smile on her face and raised the serving tray higher.

She offered the food to the group of three silently but they didn't take anything. But her smile didn't falter, she'd be out of here soon enough.

"No, not that," one of the young men corrected. "I wanted to know why you laughed."

"Oh, I didn't laugh. I wasn't laughing, I wasn't even listening. No, not me. Nope, not at all." April rushed out. "Gougère!"

The guy took the pastry from her tray and she could see the light dancing in his blue eyes like he was trying to be polite and not laugh because it would make her more embarrassed. April didn't dare look at the other two as she already felt their judging stares on her. She spun around to walk away but caught the end of the conversation as she left.

"See, I told you she wouldn't have the slightest clue about this," another man sneered and called after her. "She's just a waitress. Why don't you get back to work, Red?"

April turned back to face them and the words left her mouth before she even thought about it. "Get back to work, that's rich coming from you."

"What would you know about it?"

"What I know is that every member of the society should able to access health care no matter their social status," April said passionately. If this guy knew anything about the WHI then he'd be much more informed on the issue. "A free healthcare system would give people that can't afford health care the services they need but what would I know about that I'm just a waitress right? Enjoy the rest of your evening."

April spun on her heel and strode off briskly, her knees didn't buckle until she got back to the kitchen.

"Sorry again about Burke that was all my fault," Reed apologised at the end of their shift.

"Please don't apologise," April laughed, remembering the death stare he gave them earlier that night. "In fact, if you don't ever mention it again we'll be so even."

"Deal," Reed nodded.

"Oh, what are you doing tonight?" April asked. "If you're free you could come back to my apartment and hang out. I think my roommate's home but she's really nice."

"I can't." Reed pulled a tense face. "I actually have a date tonight."

"With who?" April asked curiously. Reed hadn't mentioned any plans to her earlier.

"Um, Charlie."

April's jaw dropped open. "Oh my gosh. Really? This is so great! I can't believe it, this is so wonderful."

"Would you chill out, it's just a date." Reed clarified, putting her hands on April's shoulders to calm her down. The girl was bouncing off the walls and she looked more excited than Charlie did when she told him that she would go out with him. "One date."

"One of many," April swayed side to side, smiling madly.

"See, this," Reed waggled her pointer finger at her friend. "This is why I didn't want to tell you."

April dejectedly dropped by her sides. "What do you mean?"

"You April Kepner," Reed slipped on her jacket and pulled up the zipper. "With your optimism and your squealing."

April had promptly halted her shrieking but the former smile that she had dropped was back with a vengeance. She was just excited about her friend having a night of romance. Reed was always so wry and while she loved her for it, April wanted to see her enjoy herself.

"I can't help it okay," April pulled her hair out of its high ponytail and slipped the hair tie around her wrist. "This is so exciting, you two are going to have a great time tonight."

"We better," was all Reed scowled. She told April she'd see her later as she made her way out. "What are your plans for tonight anyway?"

"Not much. Most likely- no definitely staying in."

"You're young and overworked. Go have an adventure." Reed stated before heading out of the room.

April pushed open the exit door at the back of the hotel and hopped down the steps. She didn't bother changing out of her uniform but did opt to swap her heels for her battered green Chucks. Maneuvering the streets in anything else right now did not sound feasible.

She walked until she reached closer to the street, ducking along the deep red awnings that hung from the building.

"Hey,"

April didn't reply right away as it took her a minute to recognise him, but the lights outside the hotel made him easily visible. It was the trying-not-laugh guy from the gala. "Hi," April replied cautiously. "What are you doing out here?"

"I wanted to talk to you, apologise for earlier," Jackson explained leaning on the side of his car. He pushed off and walked towards her. She left quite an impression on him and he didn't want to leave without talking to her.

"Why? You didn't do anything." April stuffed her hands into the shallow pockets of her grey coat. She didn't know who this guest was but she didn't want to upset them. It wasn't even his fault. "I should have kept my mouth shut."

"No, uh no what you said was the best thing I heard all night." Jackson waved her off and chuckled lowly. "It was smart and honest."

April ducked her head to hide her grin. She glanced back up to find him smiling at her. "Don't let your friends see you. I hear talking to waitresses isn't very becoming."

He laughed casually then and shrugged his shoulders. "Those guys aren't really my friends."

"Good, you could do better." April stepped closer to him.

Jackson scoffed in surprise and narrowed his eyes at her. "I said I liked honest."

"Yeah," April breaks their staring contest first and tucks her hair behind her ears. Her plan was to work and then go home and eat some leftover cashew chicken, not to stand in the dark and flirt with an attractive guy from a random high society event. "I should get going."

"How are you getting home?" he asked as soon as she had only taken one step.

April pointed in a general direction. "Ah, the Orange Line."

"I could drive you," he offered and April rose her eyebrows unconvinced. "I'm serious."

April kicked one foot at the ground and considered his proposition. Driving would be much faster and after being on her feet all day it didn't sound like the worst thing in the world. "Alright, you can drive me home…"

"Jackson," he supplied with an arm outstretched.

She shook his hand, his cool fingers enveloping the back of her palm made her shiver but she did her best to hide it. "April."

"Wait!" April chirped. She hastily pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of Jackson. The dark atmosphere meant the flash was automatically set, that and the level of brightness took him by surprise.

"Did you just take my picture?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask why?" Jackson opened the passenger side door for April to get inside his car. His knuckles brushed against her covered arm as she went past him.

"I'm sending it to my roommate," April said calmly tapping at her phone screen. "In case I don't come home, the authorities will know who to look for. Let's go."

As Jackson got back into his car and settled into the driver's seat he knew that he was in for an interesting night.


	10. The Other Avery by Imayhaveapoint

**The Other Avery**

I hear the monitors beeping, but I am unsure if I am awake or asleep.

Beep, beep, beep…

When I'm awake, I sit by her bed and watch her chest rise and fall, constantly checking the numbers on the screen that displays how strong or weak she is that day as the monitors continue to beep in the background – a reminder that there is still time.

When I force myself to close my eyes and rest, the beeping is no longer comforting. I have the same recurring nightmare again and again. I am standing over an operating table in a cold, dark room. I am alone. There is no team to help me with the patient on the table, but I am confident enough in my abilities to perform the surgery alone. My confidence falters, though, when I look down at my patient and see Harriet's still body lying in front of me. That is when the beeping gets louder as if it is happening in my mind and not coming from a machine. I panic and call out for help, but no one comes to help me. I don't operate. I can't. I don't know how to help her. I am helpless and terrified and the beeping is all I can hear. Beep, beep, beep. Louder and louder. I lift her lifeless body from the table and run to the door, knowing I have to get out. I have to get her help. I reach the door and try the handle, but it is locked. I twist and pull with everything I have, but it doesn't budge. Through the glass, Jackson appears on the other side, just as panicked, trying just as desperately to get in. I keep trying the door, thinking that if I can just get to him, if I can just get our daughter to him, she will be safe. "April!" he calls through the door. "April!"

A hand rests on my shoulder, and I sit up quickly, unaware that I had drifted off. Jackson is kneeling next to me extending a cup of coffee in my direction. I rub my eyes and look over to Harriet's crib. She is sleeping peacefully as if she is used to the dozens of wires connected to her tiny body. Maybe she is. Sometimes it's hard to remember a time before she got sick. I turn back to Jackson and take the coffee from his hand, turning it in circles with my fingers instead of drinking it. It's a nervous habit. I fidget when I worry, and lately, all I do is worry.

Jackson runs a hand over my hair. "Were you having that dream again?" He knows the answer, but it is sweet of him to ask anyway. It's the only dream I have now.

"Yeah…" I reply, not wanting to say more. I told him about it once, but I don't like to relive it. Reality is scary enough right now.

It's been 54 days since we raced Harriet, unresponsive, to the ER with a dangerously high fever. She hadn't been herself for days. The low temperature at first, whiny, not eating, unable to rest. We chalked it up to teething or a growth spurt, or a virus she must have picked up a daycare. We're doctors, we told ourselves as we took turns holding her through the night while she cried. We can fix this. But we couldn't. She was sick for a week before her temperature hit 105 degrees, and we rushed her here, to the place we hoped could save her. I will always regret not bringing her sooner. I'm her mom. I should have known something was wrong.

We watched as they performed countless tests. And when they found nothing, they would test again. It wasn't long before Catherine had a doctor who specializes in rare pediatric diseases flown in from Boston.

The day he arrived is a blur. "I've seen this before," he said. "Thalassemia. Hopefully Thalassemia Minor, but we will know for certain soon."

Her body was unable to fight off what was attacking it, which meant her red and white blood cells were being attacked. Yet because of the Thalassemia, she was not producing new, healthy red blood cells. She would not recover without a donor, and even with one, she still had a tough road ahead of her.

Our friends and family lined up to get tested, but no one was a close enough match. Harriet went on the transplant list. One full of names of children who were waiting for someone, anyone to be a close enough match to their bone marrow or stem cells to save their life before they ran out of time. It's a terrible feeling to hope your child is saved instead of others, but I can't say I didn't think it every day.

Jackson pulls a stool over to sit in front of me, and I can see there is something on his mind.

"I've been thinking…" he begins.

"About what?" I ask.

"There is someone else. Another possible donor we haven't considered," he says cautiously.

In my mind, I run through the names of our family and friends, but I can't think of anyone we missed. "Who?"

"Samuel," he says his name and I feel the air rush out of my chest. Sitting in this hospital room, praying for a miracle, I have often tried to keep my thoughts from drifting to Samuel. Sometimes I feel as if Harriet is slipping away from us a little each day, and I have to fight to keep her with us. To keep her on this side. Because I can't survive losing another child.

"What are you talking about? How could Samuel be a donor? He's gone," I try to keep the hurt out of my voice, but I can't deny I am angry that he would bring him up now.

"Of course, he is, but April, remember? A part of him may not be. I was going to check with the lab, but I wanted to discuss it with you first."

I don't know why we didn't think of this before. When Samuel died, we had a small memorial service with just family. The casket was so tiny. Jackson picked blue and had his name engraved on the top. I didn't get to see him that day, though, because the casket had to be closed. As doctors, we knew that our heartbreak could be the answer other families had been waiting for. So, we donated all of his viable organs. Many, like his heart and lungs, were too small since he was born early, but we allowed whatever could be used to be given to someone who needed it. It was a small way for Samuel to live on. We also saved his umbilical cord for testing. We hoped that maybe it would lead to answers as to why Osteogenesis Imperfecta happens and a way to prevent it. The cord was stored here at Grey-Sloan, and if it is still here, it's possible that Samuel could be able to save one more child's life: his sister's.


	11. Movie-Fic Credits

**Date: 31-12-2018 Analysis**

Challenge, sans author names, uploaded 23-10-2017. Authors revealed 05-11-2017.

 **FanFiction:** Total of  **9,031**  Views,  **47**  Reviews, Favs:  **07** , Follows:  **05**

Doc Trauma: The Time Traveler's Wife by FaziO                                            -  **06**

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Guess Who's Getting Greyed Out? by FaziO -  **06**

Japril with Benefits by MelMel1234                                                                -  **05**

Serving Avery by Japril12                                                                               -  **05**

The Other Avery by Imayhaveapoint                                                               -  **05**

Focus, Avery! by FuckwithDacey                                                                     -  **04**

Greyless by Another-Maggie                                                                          -  **04**

Guardians of Grey's Anatomy by Jerry_L                                                         -  **04**

Jackson, We've Met Before by Demitruli                                                          -  **04**

The Challenge                                                                                                -  **04**

 **AO3:** Total of  **545**  Hits,  **40**  Comments, Kudos:  **55**

The Challenge                                                                                                -  **00**

Doc Trauma: The Time Traveler's Wife by FaziO                                              -  **05**

Focus, Avery! by FuckwithDacey                                                                      -  **02**

Greyless by Another-Maggie                                                                           -  **03**

Guardians of Grey's Anatomy by Jerry_L                                                          -  **07**

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Guess Who's Getting Greyed Out? by FaziO   -  **05**

Jackson, We've Met Before by Demitruli                                                           -  **05**

Japril with Benefits by MelMel1234                                                                  -  **05**

Serving Avery by Japril12                                                                                 -  **02**

The Other Avery by Imayhaveapoint                                                                 -  **06**

**The Movies:**

1.   The Challenge - Fic Preview and Trailer

2.   The Time Traveler's Wife

3.   Focus

4.   Clueless

5.   Guardians of the Galaxy

6.   Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and Get Out (Double Feature)

7.   We've Met Before

8.   Friends with Benefits

9.   Waitress (Swedish Movie)

10\. My Sister's Keeper


End file.
